


Persuasion

by uchiha_s



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Background Relationships, Domestic Violence, F/M, Jon is an agent, Jon loves LotR and Sansa loves Jane Austen, Robb Stark/Myrcella Baratheon - Freeform, Sansa is a copy editor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-25
Updated: 2018-06-08
Packaged: 2019-05-13 13:49:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 63,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14750055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uchiha_s/pseuds/uchiha_s
Summary: Modern-setting AU. A bomb scare brings Jon back into Sansa’s orbit after years of not seeing each other. As they grow close, Jon promises himself he won’t actively interfere with Sansa’s marriage—but how long can he keep that promise to himself?





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> I already wrote this story and now I'm going to just post chapters of it as I finish editing them. Overall this story is pretty short (less than 40k words right now). I just needed a break from my Outlander AU WIP, and so I wrote this. It was partly inspired by my building undergoing bomb safety training (fun times) and partly by a post on Tumblr that was floating around a few weeks ago, discussing how Sansa would have been that ultra-preppy girl swooning over Austen/Bronte, obsessing over her grades, etc. etc., rather than acting like the queen bee that antis always seem to think she would be. 
> 
> Note that NW = Night's Watch, which is this world's version of something like the FBI. Castle Black is like Quantico/the training academy.

_“I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine.” -_ __Jane Austen_ _

_“Fairy tale does not deny the existence of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance." -_ __J. R. R. Tolkien_ _

* * *

  **Jon**

The air was thick with sirens, though the danger had passed. Ambulances and a firetruck, glittering with flashing lights, perched in the street, blocking his access. NW Agent Jon Snow parked his car illegally on the broad avenue, as close as he could get to the large, historic Tarly building. He could already see his boss, Agent Mormont, waiting outside for him by the brass revolving doors, clad in a rumpled dark suit.

Everyone else was already inside; Jon was the last to arrive on-site. He had had to take a helicopter down from Maidenpool at the last minute, and then had had to frantically change into a fresh suit and drive, well over the speed limit, into the center of King’s landing. He had been on the phone with his colleague the whole time, getting briefed on the incident, but he still felt shaky on the details. He liked to have more time to prepare.

As he strode toward Mormont on the cleared sidewalk, he adjusted the tie he had frantically tied in the car on the way, and raked a hand through the wild black hair that he knew had not fared the better for a helicopter ride.

“Better late than never, Snow,” Mormont greeted. “How goes the Mooton case?” he asked as he led Jon inside, bypassing the local police and even the SWAT team with a flash of their badges.

“Clean and simple,” Jon said wryly, tucking his badge back into the pocket of his suit jacket. He had once gotten a thrill out of flashing his badge—he had dreamed of getting to do it for so long—but now he no longer thought of it at all, and often had to hunt around to make sure he was actually carrying it with him, and had not misplaced it.

The Mooton case was, in fact, the bloodiest of his career. A bomb scare—with no one harmed—seemed like a nice but brief respite from all that blood. They would likely find the culprit after some hours spent mulling over security footage, and then call it a day.  

The Tarly building was a famous building in King’s Landing, as it was enormous and historic, as well as unbelievably ornate. The floors and walls were all cool marble, and the elevators that they were approaching were old-fashioned brass art deco affairs. Art, both traditional and contemporary, was tastefully placed at just appropriate intervals throughout the building.

It was home to several magazines as well as the Tarly publishing company, and while it boasted a high daily turnover—thousands of individuals came and went each day—it was such a benign presence in King’s Landing that Jon thought the only possible suspect was a disgruntled former employee.

“No suspects yet, but we do have a witness,” Mormont told him as they got on the elevator. “A copy editor from Tarly publishing had two odd run-ins with the same man this morning. She’s the one who called the authorities, too, based on these run-ins, and it’s the only reason this whole damn place isn’t a pile of rubble now.”

Jon’s stomach clenched. He had grown rather desensitized to the horrors that humanity could inflict upon itself, as he saw these horrors every day—immersed himself in them, got them on the soles of his shoes, felt their stench in the back of his throat—but every now and then he remembered that he dealt in human lives.

“And you want me to interview her?”

“You’re the best, and I think she’ll have a tough time of it alone in a room with a man, if you catch my meaning. Very fearful, very withdrawn. She needs someone gentle, someone with empathy. Pypar’s too awkward, Grenn’s too blunt, and Edd...well...he depresses the most cheerful of us on his good days.”

“Why not Val, then?” Jon pointed out, as the elevator _ping_ ed and the doors opened on the thirteenth floor. An elegant, frosted-glass sign for _Tarly Publishing_ greeted them on the opposite wall, directing them to the end of the hall.

“Busy with the Rattleshirt case, and besides, you _are_ the best at interviewing.”

Jon rolled his eyes at his superior openly, but all the same followed him into the empty conference room. He had done quite a lot of training on how to interact with victims of assault and domestic violence throughout his time with the NW, and he knew it was a strength of Mormont’s as well. The man could spot a battered woman from a mile away without ever so much as glimpsing a bruise. He was certain that Mormont would be right about this woman.

Jon took a seat at the far end of the conference table, where the space was cramped by extra chairs, and pushed out the chair adjacent to him. It was important for him to create a more familiar, less interrogative atmosphere. He also lowered the height of his chair, grateful that it was an office chair on wheels whose height could be adjusted. “I’ll bring her in, if you’re good to go,” Mormont said now. “You’ve got all of the details?”

“Yeah, Marsh filled me in on the way,” Jon replied, tapping his notebook. “Bring her in.”

**Sansa**

The older NW agent, a man named Mormont, led Sansa down the hall to the conference room.

"This shouldn't take long," he reassured her, as he went to open the door for her. "We appreciate your willingness to cooperate."

Sansa tugged at her hair self-consciously and twisted it over her other shoulder, averting her eyes.

"Of course," she said faintly. "I'm happy to help."

Mormont turned the handle and pushed the door in, revealing the near-empty conference room and hitting her with a burst of the smell of burned coffee.

At the end of the long table sat a man in a tailored suit with wild dark hair haphazardly pushed away from his face, and a short beard, which contrasted oddly with the sleek, tidy appearance of his suit. He was strikingly handsome but worn-looking, like he had been awake for too many days in a row—and in fact, he probably had. The door clicked shut and he looked up, and across the room their eyes met.

Her stomach clenched in shock. She knew this man. She knew these grey eyes.

"S-sansa Stark," he said, startled, sitting up straighter. She offered a strained smile.

"It's Sansa Bolton, now," she said. "Jon. It's been a while."

He got to his feet hastily, nearly knocking over his chair behind him, and reached forward to pull out the chair adjacent to his a bit further.

"H-here, have a seat," he said, clearing his throat.

She skirted the conference table and made her way to him, and they each reached forward as though to shake hands, then simultaneously realized that was an odd thing to do. Jon needlessly adjusted his suit jacket, and Sansa tugged on her coffee-stained blouse, each of them trying to smooth over the moment, before sitting down. She felt his incisive gaze flick to her blouse, resting briefly on the coffee stains, before looking down at his notes. He had an empty paper cup of coffee and an open notebook, with his precise handwriting covering most of the page.

The room was painfully quiet. The sounds of the street were too distant, and the building had been as quiet as a morgue after the chaos of the emergency evacuation. The silence made her hyper-aware of her body. When she swallowed, she felt even that was too loud. She wished she had brought a pen, or something to fidget with, but instead she folded her hands on the table and tried to smooth her features.

Jon was writing her name, she saw: Sansa Bolton, with a line under it. She remembered now that she had always admired his handwriting. It was unusual, and uniquely suited to him. Precise but casual; elegant but, still, undoubtedly a man's handwriting. "I have to record this conversation. I hope you don't mind," he said, pulling a tiny, sleek black audio recorder from inside his suit jacket. He set it on the table between them.

"Of course not." She watched him flick it on with a short, clean fingernail in a practiced motion.

She hadn't seen him in years, not since Dad’s funeral, she realized. She was fairly certain he was still in touch with Arya and Robb, and probably Bran and Rickon, too. He probably talked to them more than she did. The thought was too heavy so she set it aside, but she still felt it pulling her down anyway.

They had grown up together, but they'd never been close. She remembered he had gone to university and then shortly thereafter joined the NW—his dream job. She had always liked the idea of him with the NW. It had suited him so well, and having the dream of it had changed him so much, from a sour, angst-filled teenager and into a young man with goals and dreams.

"This is an interview between myself, Agent Jon Snow, and a witness, Sansa St—I mean, Bolton. Sansa Bolton," he corrected swiftly, dispassionately. "The time is one forty six pm, on July eleventh, two thousand eighteen." He cleared his throat again and clicked his pen. "Sansa, please tell me about the encounter you had this morning, in your own words."

He was studying her and she was gripped with the urge to tell him to look away. For some reason his gaze was too bright, too intense.

She risked another glance at him, perceiving all of the little ways he had changed. He had a long scar down the side of his face, and another over his brow on the other side. Both were older, faded. His eyes were shadowed from lack of sleep, but at the same time, alert and bright. He had grown into his features, and the soft boyishness had melted away.

She wondered how she looked to him. She knew she had lost much of her 'bloom.’ She was certain she looked older, faded, just like his scars; maybe even ugly.

"I took the elevator to this floor. I think it was about eight forty-five, maybe eight fifty. I wasn't paying attention, and was looking down when the doors opened. I smacked into a man and spilled my latte everywhere. The man immediately seemed strange to me," she began, avoiding Jon's eyes. "I didn't get a good look at him, but I think I would be able to pick him out of a lineup. He was a bit taller than me, maybe by two or three inches, and...well...quite heavy-set, especially around the middle. He had patchy blond-grey hair, and blotchy skin, and—and a lot of broken capillaries around his nose, and light eyes, maybe blue but I didn’t look very closely. He was wearing a blue shirt with a crown symbol on it, and a black hoodie. I think he was about forty-five."

"That's a good description," Jon remarked, sounding almost surprised. She watched him quickly scribble down a few notes. "Then what happened?"

"He pushed past me and got on the elevator, but I was so busy with the spilled latte that I didn't see whether he went up or down."

"Was just about to ask," Jon muttered, making another quick note.

Sansa wondered if he would tell Robb or Arya about seeing her, wondered what he might say about her. The idea made her stomach clench. She wondered what they had said to him about her, wondered if he hated her on Arya's behalf. That, too, made her sick to her stomach with shame, guilt, and anger. She wanted to ask, wanted to explain her side of things, too; but the Jon she had grown up with would not have been interested.

She sensed he had found her melodramatic and too girly, too goody two-shoes, to be bothered with her. He had always rolled his eyes with Arya at things she said, things she did. Her defensiveness was rising, now. "Then what happened?" he prompted, his low voice soft and gentle, and it so directly clashed with the memories she was reliving that it made her angry, too. It felt fake, it felt like she was being manipulated.

"Nothing happened," she said, more harshly than necessary, but he didn't react. "I-I didn't see him again until about—I think it was eleven fifteen or so; I'm not exactly positive as I wasn't watching the clock—when I went to use the bathroom and saw him again. He had been lingering across the hall, outside of the men's room, and he saw me and told me, 'get out while you still can.'"

"And you said...?"

"I didn't say anything. I didn't know what to think. Then he went into the men's room, and that was when I turned right around and went to the building manager's office." She felt her face flush as she briefly met Jon's eyes. "I'm a natural tattletale, I suppose."

"And probably now responsible for saving over a thousand lives, not to mention the prevention of economic destruction of the surrounding area," Jon said, surprising her with the firmness of his words. "Why do you think he told you to 'get out while you still can'? Why would he attempt to warn you, in particular?"

"I don't know. I've been wondering that," she admitted, looking down at her hands. "He seemed really familiar, but I couldn't for the life of me remember where I'd seen him before. He seemed surprised to see me, but I don't know if that was just because he had been hoping not to run into anyone at all."

"Can you guess at all how you might possibly know him?"

"No. I was looking through my Facebook, to see if something might jog my memory, or something. I don't know what I thought I'd find. But I can't remember how I know him—or even if I really do know him from somewhere." She shrugged, watching him take more notes in that precise hand.

"Well, it was a good idea."

Why was he being so damn encouraging? She supposed it was some sort of technique to get her to talk more, to get her to cooperate with his questions, but all it succeeded in doing was making her feel foolish, like a child being manipulated into good behavior.

He probably thought she was an idiot—after all, he had made it abundantly clear when they had been children that he had found her frivolous. Or at least, Arya had, and he had always gone along with Arya. "If you happen to remember anything else," he began in a more brisk tone, making her realize the interview was over, "or if you figure out how you know the man, you can contact me here."

He tore off half of a sheet of paper from his notebook and wrote out his name—his full name—and a phone number and his email address, and slid it across the table to her. She took it with clammy fingers, folded it up into quarters. "Thank you for your time and efforts. This concludes the interview with witness Sansa Sta—Sansa Bolton," he corrected smoothly, "and myself, Agent Jon Snow. The time is one fifty six pm, on July the eleventh, two thousand eighteen."

And he shut off the recording, leaving them once more in strained, billowing silence.

"What a coincidence," she remarked, desperate for noise, getting to her feet as Jon did as well. He was stowing the recorder back in his suit jacket. She wondered if he was carrying a gun, hidden in a holster inside his suit. He probably was—didn't they all have to carry guns? NW agents always did on television shows and in movies, but perhaps that was an exaggeration.

The thought made her sick. Did he _like_ carrying a gun? She thought of him as an angst-filled teenager, dressed all in shabby black, refusing to cut his hair or do anything but listen to his heavy metal and read fantasy novels alone in his room.

It suddenly struck her, as he faced her again, that they had not been so different as teens.

He had had his Lord of the Rings, she had had her Jane Austen; he had had his Deftones and she had had her Kate Bush. Both of them had been absorbed by their emotions—he with his raw anger, she with her melancholy and wistful fantasies of romance and true love, the kind of love found in a gothic novel. He had had his hockey, she had had her ballet.

But now that time was past and gone, and they had diverged sharply. She wondered if he still listened to heavy metal, if he still cared about Lord of the Rings.

"Talked to Robb recently?" She tried for levity.

"Yeah, yesterday, actually." He was studying her. "How about you?"

"You know, I don't even remember when I last did," she admitted, face flushing. "I've just... been so busy."

"Right." He looked away, biting his pretty lip, raking a hand through his hair that only messed it up more. "I—I know it's belated, but...congratulations, I guess. On getting married. I know I heard about it but I suppose I forgot."

"Oh, that. Thanks. It's been so long now," she blustered. "H-how about you? Married, I mean? ...Kids?" She thought she would have heard if he’d got married, but she had been so out of touch that she supposed it was possible.

"Not with a job like this," he said, falsely joking, and she got the feeling it was an oft-used line; there was a roboticness to his voice as he spoke. He fidgeted with his pen. "I—er—ought to take the next interview."

"Of course. Um, I'll go," she stammered, and she turned too swift, smacking her hip into the table, and it hit a bruise, one of the really bad ones, and she flinched. "Clumsy," she muttered, eyes burning as her hip throbbed painfully, hastily extricating herself and hurrying to the door.

"Oh—that's my mobile," he said behind her, and she paused at the door to look back at him. "On the paper. So. I mean. Even if you don't remember anything else...you have it, I guess. We should...get coffee or a beer or something. Sometime."

The silence was burning, agonizing. She had to unstick her lips to speak, and she licked them, watched his eyes briefly follow the movement, then flick away again.

It was a nice gesture, but she would never be allowed to get coffee or a beer with Jon, ever. There wasn't even a question in her mind. It was an impossibility. He might as well have suggested they meet on the moon.

"Sure," she said, looking away, pushing open the door. "I mean, I'm really busy, but maybe we can fit something in." And before he could respond, she left the conference room.

**Jon**

Jon slumped back into the wheelie chair weakly, his heart still hammering in his chest so violently he was certain she had been able to hear it the entire interview. His notes were useless; he had not even been aware of what he was writing.

Sansa Stark—rather, Sansa Bolton—was so greatly altered from the person she had always been that he had felt, as she had walked into the room, like he had been slapped.

She was still strikingly lovely, but she looked like the color had been bled from her, like she had been left in the dark too long. She was pale, her eyes so shadowed that they looked bruised. She had always been bright and gleaming like copper, but the woman who had just sat before him had been unable to maintain eye contact and had barely spoken above a whisper for the entire interview. She had looked so _small_ , like she was trying her very best to simply curl up and disappear into thin air. This was not the Sansa he had known his entire life. This was not Sansa at all.

He had known something was off, vaguely. When Arya had first had her falling out with Sansa, he had received text messages at all hours of the night, and, once, a tear-filled call around three in the morning. The separation had caused Arya significant pain, and though time had dulled it, he knew it still kept her up at night, but that she was far too stubborn to ever relent or apologize to her sister. Sansa had not had _quite_ the same falling out with Robb, but Robb had mentioned many times that Sansa only occasionally returned his calls, texts, or emails.

He had not considered it his problem because Sansa had never liked him, and they had never had any sort of bond. He considered Arya as good as his sister; Sansa, however, had always been a stranger. As an adult he had often thought, in wry but bitter amusement, that in fact of all of the Stark children she had been the most similar to him, and if only they had been able to overcome whatever barrier divided them, they might have been close.

But now, Robb was in Dorne with Myrcella; Arya in Braavos; Bran, Rickon, and Catelyn all still up north in Winterfell. He was geographically the closest to Sansa now, and the irony was not lost on him.

He debated texting Robb; he would never bring up Sansa to Arya over text. He fidgeted with his mobile. He could not think of what he could possibly say.

_Hi, I just saw Sansa, she looks like a ghost._

_Hi, Sansa just saved her whole building from a bomb scare, but I don't think she's alright._

_Hi, Sansa needs help._

"Interview go well?" Pypar poked his head in, startling Jon.

"Oh—yeah. Got a decent description," Jon said, shaking himself out of his reverie, and stowing away his mobile once more.

He would decide on whether to text Robb later.

Right now, he had work to do.

**Sansa**

Sansa ran back to her office, ignoring her coworker Margaery, and locked the door. 

Her office was her sanctuary. She had worked very hard to make it to the level where she had her own office, and she prized the privacy and status that her own office afforded her—as well as the opportunity to have a space that was  _hers_ and  _hers_ alone, which belonged to her and which she could decorate as she pleased. It always made her feel better to step inside her office, like she had entered her own world. 

But today it didn't make her feel any better. Jon had invaded her world; she did not want him here. She felt naked, vulnerable. 

In her desk drawer she kept a stash of secret photographs of her family, beneath a drawer organizer, for looking at when she found her heart aching for them, and she took the photographs out now, examining each one desperately, waiting for her heart to stop pounding. 

Dad and Mom with Robb at his wedding, just before Dad had died, the three of them caught up in sudden, gleeful laughter. Robb and Myrcella dancing together at their wedding, a picture she had sneaked, perfectly candid, of them twined together, gazing into each other’s eyes. A candid of Bran reading _War and Peace_ on the beach, looking highly disgruntled at having been dragged into the sunlight, with Rickon in the corner of the frame, about to jump on him. And, most painful of all, Arya—posed with Jon, too—dressed in one of her ratty band tees, from when she had gone to Castle Black, the NW's training academy, to visit Jon. She had run one of the training courses with him to test herself, and they were both drenched in sweat and covered in mud. Arya was beaming into the camera, Jon offering that seldom-given half-smile of his, which Arya was the best at coaxing from him. 

But today the pictures did not soothe her. They only made it hard to breathe, made her chest tighten, and she hastily, frantically shoved them back in the drawer. 

Jon's grey eyes had always seen too much. 

She couldn't stop shaking. 


	2. Chapter Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm just posting chapters as I finish editing them, so apologies for spamming the tag. 
> 
> Thanks to everyone who left comments/kudos! They mean a lot to me. I'll be responding to the comments soon.

_“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a novel must be intolerably stupid.”_

-  _Jane Austen_  

_“I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.”_

-  _J.R.R. Tolkien_

**Jon**

Jon stared at Robb's contact information on his mobile’s screen. Jon himself never bothered to assign photos to his contacts, but Arya had gone through his phone assigning pictures, and for Robb she had put a picture of Robb's son Ned, his round toddler face smeared with spaghetti sauce. He had Robb's curly auburn hair and Myrcella's catlike green eyes, and, clearly, Robb's stubborn will, as demonstrated by the fury contorting his spaghetti-o-covered face as he waved a spoon around in a blur.

Jon drew in a deep breath, and called Robb.

"Hello?" Peppa Pig was blaring—he knew it because he had watched about four hours straight of the cartoon last time he had visited while watching Ned, who had sat on his lap gummily chewing on his Peppa Pig toy, utterly absorbed—and it sounded like Myrcella was trying to get their daughter, Joanna, to eat her vegetables, judging by the shattering  _NO!!!_  he kept hearing.

Somehow, Robb managed to be as cheerful and good-natured as usual even amongst all the chaos.

"Hey. It's Jon."

"I know. My screen told me. You come up as a wolf on my phone now," Robb said. "No _, stop that_ —sorry, Ned's got my work laptop, hold on." He set the mobile down and came back a moment later, slightly out of breath. "Nothing like a two-year-old to help you locate everything that is expensive and breakable in your house. What's up?"

Jon stared at the ceiling. His apartment felt very silent in comparison to the chaos of the Stark-Baratheon home. He drew in a breath.  _Might as well get right to the point._

"I saw Sansa today."

"Sansa—what?!  _No!_ "

"Yeah, I—"

"—Sorry, that was for Grey Wind. He really wants to rip Peppa Pig's head off," Robb explained, hassled. "So, you saw Sansa? How? I called her like two months ago and she never got back to me."

"Right." Jon chewed on his lip. "I sort of—I ran into her. I forgot she got married."

_Maybe intentionally._

"Don't remind me," Robb snapped, his voice unusually frosty. "She eloped, remember? Mom was devastated. Still is."

"Yeah, it's coming back now. What was his name? Bolton?"

He opened his laptop, awaiting Robb's response.

"Ramsay Bolton." Robb's voice was hard. Jon's screen brightened as his laptop woke back up, showing his search results. Pale blue eyes looked back at him from Ramsay Bolton's company website.

So he had found the right Bolton, then.

"I don't remember meeting him—"

"—Because you didn't. None of us did. None of us ever will." He heard Robb shout again, at either Grey Wind or Ned, after an ominous ripping sound followed by wails. "Every time Mom's gone to visit, he's had to work late, or been busy. Every time, Sansa's had to meet Mom elsewhere, not at her apartment. It's the weirdest fucking—sorry, Myr."

"How long has she been married?"

"Two years. I can't believe you forgot, but then I guess you guys never got on." Robb's voice had darkened considerably and Jon felt guilty. "Whatever. Maybe he doesn't even actually exist! I mean, she had imaginary boyfriends when she was a kid; why not an imaginary husband, too?"

"...It doesn't sound like you tried that hard to meet him, or get involved," Jon remarked, scrolling through Bolton's website. “Also, you had your share of imaginary girlfriends… such as Talisa the doctor.”

"First of all, fuck you— _sorry, Myr_. Anyway, believe me, Jon, I've tried. Myrcella has tried. Mom has tried. Bran has tried. Rickon has tried. We've _all_  tried, to no avail. And obviously, Arya tried in the beginning, but—"

"—Yeah, they're not speaking, I know."

"Right, you would, I guess. Well, anyway, that whole situation is fu—er,  _fudged_ up, and I don't know what to tell you."

"I guess I've been a bit out of the loop regarding her," Jon admitted.

"Aren't we all," Robb said disgustedly. "Look, I've gotta go—Grey Wind is about to turn Peppa Pig into bacon strips."

Jon's mobile went silent. He felt guilty; he knew Robb had rung off just to get away from the unpleasant subject of Sansa.

Ramsay Bolton had his own tech startup. It seemed, based on what Jon could find, that it was about to go public. On the company website’s sleek  _About_  page, a professional, high-quality headshot of Ramsay smirked back at him. He was almost handsome, but his eyes were a shade too pale, his lips just a little too full. He was successful, though, and Jon had found a recording of a talk he had given at a tech startup meetup group, and watched it, absorbed.

Ramsay Bolton strode back and forth on the little stage as he spoke, radiating a powerful, almost hyperactive energy, clad in a fine black cashmere jumper, jeans, and subtly cool trainers—undoubtedly Sansa's touch. He had a musical cadence to his voice that Jon found a bit eerie, but that the audience seemed to like. He was impressive, highly intelligent, magnetic, and engaging.

Based on all of the facts, Ramsay was a squeaky-clean tech geek with serious business savvy. He was, on paper, the ideal husband for someone like Sansa.

The thing was, Jon had spent the last ten years utterly immersed in identifying criminals—and their victims. He had studied criminals and victims. He knew a  _lot_  about them both, and he understood them both. He knew a lot about the different types of crimes, about the patterns of behavior of both criminals and their victims. 

And Sansa, to him, looked like a textbook case of domestic abuse.

The diminished confidence, the long sleeves even in sweltering heat, the sudden falling-out with her entire family—with whom she had previously been unusually close—and the avoidance of making any plans spoke volumes to him.

He dialed on his mobile again.  _Calling…Jeor Mormont._

It was late, but he knew Mormont would be working.

“Hey Snow,” Mormont greeted, his voice gravelly in a way that made Jon instantly picture him sitting before his computer with a cup of cold coffee in his dark office.

“Hey, I was thinking we should continue the Tarly Bomber investigation on-site for a few days,” he said without preface, scrolling through Ramsay Bolton’s website.

“Sam won’t be too pleased,” chuckled Mormont. “Doesn’t like to chance a run-in with his father.”

“I just think we stand to learn more if we hang around on-site than if we take everything back to the labs,” Jon continued without addressing the comment on Sam. He reopened his notes, the notes he had typed up from his notebook, and mindlessly selected and unselected text, pretending to think on the content. “I think the bomber’s someone familiar with the building, and we don’t have enough information yet.”

This, at least, was entirely true.

“Another one of your hunches, eh? Alright, I’ll put in a call. Night,” the older man said, before ringing off.

**Sansa**

A knock on her doorframe startled Sansa in the middle of editing. She looked up and Jon was standing in the doorway to her office, clad in charcoal suiting, looking significantly more pulled-together than yesterday, and carrying a thick folder and a notebook.

"Oh, Jon, hi," she stammered, pushing away from her desk.

"Hi, can I come in?"

"Sure, of course."

Jon only took another step in, never fully entering the office. “I didn’t realize the NW would be hanging around during the investigation,” she added, mainly for something to say, to break the silence. Too late she realized it sounded like she did not want them there.

Jon’s grey eyes swept over the office, lingering on the plants on the bookshelf, and on the print of Waterhouse’s  _The Lady of Shalott_ that hung adjacent to her desk _._ She felt embarrassed by his incisive gaze, and the way it lingered on the things that she loved, and out of nowhere, remembered attending one of his hockey games directly after a medieval faire she had gone to earlier in the day with her best friend in school, Jeyne Poole.

They had dressed up—Sansa had spent _months_  sewing her own costume, a minty-green silk dress whose style she had ambitiously copied from  _The Lady of Shalott_ , complete with a circlet over her hair—and had had to go directly to the game from the faire. At fifteen years old, they had been self-conscious yet somehow unashamed to walk into a hockey stadium while wearing medieval gowns, and had sat in the stands, giggling, flustered and delighted by the obvious looks from others.

She distinctly recalled seeing Jon come off the ice and, briefly, pull off his helmet, revealing his dark hair clinging damply to his jaw and neck with sweat, and his cheeks flushed from exertion. He had pulled out his mouth guard and pushed back his hair, shoulders heaving as he tried to catch his breath. Jeyne, who had always enjoyed making fun of Jon—and Arya—had said something disparaging about his wild hair, and Sansa had laughed, which she would later regret, even though she knew Jon had not heard what she’d said. At that very moment he had happened to look back up at them, those grey eyes slowly taking in her medieval dress and flushed face.

For one burning moment they had simply regarded each other nakedly, so far apart, surrounded by the chaos of the game, and her breath had caught in her throat as she had felt gooseflesh raise all over her body.

She could not say what his gaze did. He had never looked at her like that before, and at that point, no one had—yet.

Those grey eyes leisurely took in every part of her, the parts that she liked and the parts that she did not like, lingering with care on her gown and on the circlet in her hair.

But then the moment had passed, and the blazing heat of that moment made the frostiness of the next so much worse.

He had openly rolled his eyes at her, clearly gleaning that they had been laughing at him, clearly finding her gown ridiculous, the expression carefully exaggerated to ensure that she saw it, and then turned away to put his helmet back on.

She had sat there, shocked and rebuked into teary silence—for at that age she was never very far from tears—unable to hear anything that Jeyne was saying, hands fisted in the fabric over her knees. 

He had never masked his feeling toward her, she thought. He had always found her ridiculous, frivolous, unworthy.

“Yeah, just for a few days,” Jon said, looking away from the print, and Sansa suppressed a stab of defensiveness as she came back to the present moment.

So what if she still loved the legend of King Arthur? So what if it still mattered to her? He probably still loved hockey, too. “I was going to get lunch,” he said now, “and was wondering if you’d go with me.”

She stared at him in shock.

She thought of her debit card, of how Ramsay reviewed every transaction. Even if she bought lunch for herself occasionally, it was a risk—Ramsay seemed to have a sense for these things. She didn't know  _how_ , but he always could sniff out a suspicious transaction.  _Just decided to go out for lunch, did you?_ he’d ask, scrolling through the transactions.  _Was it fun? Who’d you go with? Anyone cute?_ His voice would become that dangerous, soft, musical tone that meant terror, pain.

And then she thought of the secret stash of bills in her desk drawer, singles that she had been slowly accumulating, for reasons she could not quite put into words.

She had money she could use, money that Ramsay didn’t know about.

Jon raised his brows at her. “Unless you already ate,” he added, and she blushed, realizing she had merely been staring at him. She unstuck her lips, and looked down.

She could not explain to him that she had never expected him to invite her to lunch, that she had just been remembering them being cruel to each other in the way that only teenagers could: that volley of pointless unkindness that only the powerful insecurity of adolescence could drive people to maintain.

“Um, yeah. Just give me a moment. I-I’ll meet you downstairs, in the lobby,” she said, surprising herself. She had meant to decline when she’d opened her mouth.

 _But I’m saving that money_ , she told herself.

_But what for?_

_For…something,_  she insisted.  _For something in the future, when I might need money._

She had had shadowy ideas of taking a train far away, of getting a hotel room, of calling Mom and Robb, and maybe even Arya, and telling them everything.

But she had only managed to amass enough for half a train ticket back north in the past six months. At this rate she would be dead before she had enough money.

And besides, Ramsay would follow her, anyway.

It was her own fault. She should have known better. She had made her own bed and now she would lay in it.

“Oh. Sure. Sounds good.” Jon bit his lip and turned. “See you in ten?”

“Yeah, in ten.”

* * *

Ten minutes later, they stepped out onto the overcrowded sidewalk in strained silence. The sky was grey but the air no cooler for it, and she felt like they were being steamed for cooking. Jon had shed his suit jacket before meeting her and rolled up his sleeves, revealing taut, lean forearms. She was envious—even rolling up her sleeves would have felt delicious. She was already sweating.

"So…where's good?" Jon asked awkwardly as they reached the corner and waited for the light to change.

"I don't usually go out for lunch," she admitted, "but I know everyone likes the deli the next block over."

"Deli it is," Jon said, shoving his hands in his pockets. "Didn't you like cooking? I guess you usually make your own lunch?"

She had leapt at the opportunity to take a cooking class in school, and had probably annoyed the pants off of her whole family for weeks leading up to it. She supposed that was why he would remember such an inconsequential detail.

"I do, and it's cheaper," she admitted, then felt guilty drawing attention to the concept of money—but she had the bills, crisp and alien to her, folded in her purse, and she was going to use them today, dammit.

It was an act of rebellion.

Ramsay might find out.

If he found out, there would be consequences.

But then the light changed, and Jon glanced back at her before stepping into the street, and the gust of a passing truck mussed his hair and he sheepishly raked a hand through it, reminding her powerfully of her childhood, and she suddenly, out of nowhere, thought,  _fuck the consequences._

Forel's Deli was just around the corner, and shadowed by scaffolding over its face that had been there for seemingly forever. Inside was grubby and fluorescent, all smeared brown laminate countertops and gleaming metal racks of foil snack bags, and it was overcrowded, but by a stroke of luck there was an open booth near the window.

"You grab the table," she said suddenly, surprising even herself with her bossiness. "What do you want?"

"Uh..." She watched his eyes narrow at the menu. "Everything bagel, toasted, no cream cheese."

"No cream cheese?" she asked, aghast. "But why even _have_  the bagel, then?"

"Alright, cream cheese it is," he conceded in amusement, and pulled out his wallet, but she waved him off.

"I-it's on me," she told him, looking away. "Seriously, don't even think about it. Just go grab the table."

"Alright, thanks," he said in surprise.

She waited in line and ordered. Handing over the crisp bills gave her such a rush of both dread and senseless joy that she felt faint when she stepped away from the cash wrap. She did not know who had taken over her body. She sneaked a glance at Jon through the sea of customers, sitting in the corner in front of the damp glass. He was looking at his mobile, probably replying to emails.

Sansa brought the bagels back to the table Jon had gotten, her face warm. She had bought lunch. She was out to lunch with someone. It filled her with a sense of mad glee. 

She felt reckless. Who knew what she might do next?

"Thanks," Jon said as she slid into the booth across from him, fighting a grin.

"No problem. So...how's the investigation going?" She felt awkward eating in front of him, then felt silly for it. It was just Jon. She'd known him her whole life. It wasn't like it was a date. His lips twitched.

"I actually can't talk about it," he said apologetically, and she waved him off.

"Right, right. I should have realized," she stammered, absorbing herself in her bagel just to have something else to look at.

It was ridiculous to feel so shy. What was there to feel shy about? At least Jon seemed to feel uncomfortable too. He kept averting his eyes, kept fidgeting, kept touching his mouth.

"So you're a copy editor," he said suddenly as he tore his bagel in half. He had nice hands. He always had, she remembered. She'd noticed even when they were younger. "Wasn't that your dream job?"

That he remembered made her hands shake a little.

"Yes, actually. And being an NW agent was yours," she said. "I'm surprised you remember, but I guess I talked about it a lot."

"Only on a daily basis," he said, and it took her a moment to realize he was only teasing her. It was a bit forced, a bit strained, but it still made her smile.

She was not the girl who chattered incessantly anymore, and felt quite removed from that girl, but it was nice to be reminded of that girl. She still loved that girl, missed that girl. It was nice to know that someone else remembered that girl, even if she had been annoying. "Do you like it?"

That too was forced, and yet, it was also nice. He was trying, making an effort. She didn't know why he felt the need to.

"I do. I get to read all day, and people always think it's the most boring of all the publishing jobs, but you sort of get to know authors by their mistakes," she admitted. "People have patterns of mistakes, certain things they always do. Typos, misplaced words, that sort of thing." She had never articulated this before. She'd never been asked.

"Yeah, I always type 'was' in place of 'have' if I'm really tired," Jon said. "Every report it happens at least once. I don't know where it comes from, or why I do it." He hesitated, fidgeting with his plastic knife. "I remember you reading constantly when we were kids. Didn't you love Jane Austen? The famous one wasn't your favorite; I remember that."

"You're right. It was—"

"—No, don't tell me. What's the famous one?  _Pride and Prejudice_?" He narrowed his eyes as he thought, and a lump was rising in her throat. "Name the books, but don't tell me which one."

" _Sense and Sensibility_."

"No, not that one."

" _Emma_ ," she suggested.

"No, definitely not that one."

" _Persuasion_ —"

"—Yes, that one! …Right?"

"Yes, it's still my favorite." She looked down, embarrassed at how her eyes burned. She did not know why this was having such an effect on her. " _Lord of the Rings_  was your favorite, right?"

"Yeah, it was," he admitted, his voice almost sheepish, before biting into his bagel. She took a bite of hers.

"Because of Aragorn?" she asked after she'd swallowed.

"Probably," he agreed thickly through his food. "I think I liked the notion of pure good and pure evil battling against each other."

"You liked  _Dune_ , too, I remember."

"Yeah, I did," he said in surprise. "Good memory."

She could not recover from the fact that he had remembered that she loved _Persuasion_. It was such a meaningless detail.

But Ramsay did not know what her favorite book was, and Ramsay did not care.

It had so much been about him from the beginning: her in awe of him, of his ideas, his energy, and his success. The moments where it was about her had been intense, but in actuality so few and far between. He had offered her scraps, just enough for her to feel like she was getting something in return, to feel like there might be more.She remembered reading _The Perks of Being a Wallflower_ and being shattered by one line in particular: _We accept the love we think we deserve._

It was hard to remember that point in time, before things had gone so violent, back when he had seemed like Prince Charming. She still caught flashes of it, now and then, when they were around other people: she was jolted with that feeling of awe and amazement. 

But he had never had that feeling about her. From the beginning she had been the sidekick, the lucky one, the lesser one.

And then her life had slowly narrowed, until there was no one left in it but Ramsay, and there was no one left who knew or cared what her favorite book was. And now here she was, sitting in an overcrowded deli with a man she had not seen in years, getting teary because he had remembered a meaningless—yet vital—fact about her.

"Is that a technique?" she asked finally, looking up at him again when the risk of tears had passed. His mouth was full of bagel; he looked like he’d been caught in the middle of a crime. "You said, 'good memory,' and it reminded me of our interview," she explained while he chewed. "You gave a lot of encouragement during the interview, I mean. I was wondering, at the time, if that's some sort of interviewing technique."

"Oh." He swallowed, and wiped his hands on a napkin. "No. I mean, I do have to encourage witnesses, sometimes, but that wasn’t it. You just had an unusually careful recall of the suspect. But I remember you were always pretty observant, always noticed how things looked or what was going on around you, so it makes sense. It's just surprising to get that level of accuracy from a witness. Most of the time, witnesses can't provide too many useful details, and if they do, half the time they're generated in the moment."

"You mean they're lying?" she asked in surprise.

"Yeah, I mean, it's not intentional. They're not trying to lie," Jon explained, toying with his empty basket. He seemed shy about talking about his work, she thought. Almost embarrassed that he knew so much, that he was so clearly good at it. "I think it happens because they want to seem knowledgeable, want to be helpful, so they provide a lot of meaningless details that they think are real, but probably aren't based on reality."

"Then how do you tell the difference?"

"It's pretty apparent with their body language, but if I'm not certain, I'll ask similar questions a few minutes later in the interview, and usually get a slightly different response."

He had always been skilled in reading people, had always been perceptive. It was easy to picture him narrowing his grey eyes, cutting into the person before him with surgical precision. "Actually, it's usually the incidental things that are the most useful from an interview—the things they tell you without being asked, the things they tell you when they think they’re telling you something else. And you begin to build a context for the crime, and from there it's down to security footage and forensics to place the actual crime."

"Do you carry a gun?" she blurted out suddenly. His lips twitched again. He'd always had a pretty mouth, she remembered that too, and felt a little ashamed for remembering something like that.

"Yes. I have to," he said, “and no, you can't see it."

"Are you carrying it now?"

"Yes. It's in my back pocket."

"Have you ever used it?"

"Yes." He looked a little more reluctant now.

"Sorry," she said quickly. "It probably is weird to talk about. I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable."

"You didn't. I'm just not allowed to talk about it. Legally, I mean."

"I guess that makes dating hard," she remarked. "Just because you're not allowed to talk about anything related to your day, really."

"You don't end up wanting to," he said. "You work so many hours that every minute you're not working, you don't want to think about it at all."

"But you end up thinking about it anyway, I bet."

He offered her a wry half-smile, then looked away again.

She felt like she was dancing around the things they ought to have been talking about, but Jon made no move to discuss Arya, to ask her about Ramsay, about any of it, and she didn't bring it up.

There was a growing sense of him doing her a favor, in some larger way, and it made her uncomfortable—even though she had been the one to buy lunch. She didn't want to be a charity case, and the notion that he was being generous was moving from flattering to hurtful. Maybe it was just her mind playing tricks on her; but she couldn't escape the fact that they had not cared for each other growing up.

No, that wasn't it. She had cared about him. And, in an abstract way, she had liked him, too. He was important to her. But there had always been a tension, a lack of familiarity. He had ruffled Arya's hair and been tackled by Robb and would always hug Bran and Rickon, but they had never  _once_  touched.

She could not explain it, save for the fact that they had inhabited such largely separate worlds, and had no reason to occupy each other's world. They had nothing in common, at least, not superficially—and yet she still carried that sense that they were not so different. Both of them emotional, both of them idealists, both of them people-watchers.

But nevertheless, they had no reason to interact now. Maybe he felt he was doing Robb and Mom a favor; or maybe he was building up to talking to her about Arya. Maybe he felt she was his obligation.

_But I’m not your obligation. I don’t want to be anyone’s obligation._

In any case, they had finished their lunch. There was no reason to linger here in their booth any longer, given that they were not friends and had never been close.

"I should get back to the office," she remarked suddenly, making a show of looking at the time on her mobile.

"Yeah, I ought to get back to work as well," Jon agreed, and they shuffled out of the booth and went back into the humid afternoon, the damp air even more oppressive after the air conditioning of the deli.

"I...don't know how in touch you are with everyone," she began as they fell into step together on the sidewalk, "but I...haven't really been in touch with Arya for a long time."

"Yeah, I know."

"Right. Well, I just ... I don't know." She toyed with the strap of her purse as they waited at a crosswalk. Their elbows brushed and they each hastily stepped away from each other.

There was a strained moment where they might have acknowledged the contact, but neither knew how to, so they let it pass. "I just thought I should mention it, I guess. In case you didn't know."

She wanted to ask what Arya had said of it, she wanted to hear his opinion on it, but at the same time she didn't, and he was staring at the traffic, apparently unconcerned with her fight with Arya. "Oh, I want to see that," she blustered, desperate to fill the billowing silence between them, desperate to move on from her obvious pain. A bus had gone by, emblazoned with an ad for  _Florian and Jonquil_ —her favorite director, Oberyn Martell, had redone the old movie.

"Me too," Jon said to her surprise. She looked to him in shock, and he shifted uncomfortably. The light changed, and they began walking. "I… heard it's good," he explained a little lamely.

He didn't want to see it; any fool could see that. He was being nice again. He was offering her something, but her pride disallowed her from taking the chance. He didn't need to be nice to her. She didn't  _need_  his charitable kindness.

Anger and hurt rose like bile, burning her throat, as they walked around the corner, back to Tarly Publishing. He gestured for her to push through the revolving brass door ahead of him, and then she was in the cool darkness of the main lobby. A few men in suits—she recognized them as NW agents—were lingering there with coffee, and they waved to Jon as he pushed in after her.

This was it.

They turned to each other.

"Thanks for lunch," she said. Jon gave her that same wry half-grin.

"No, thank you," he parried. "You paid, after all."

"Right. Well, thanks for your company," she stammered. She met his eyes again, thought of how they had lit up as he had correctly guessed her favorite book.

And some madness took hold of her again. "If you really do want to see that movie with me, let me know," she blurted.

What was she doing?

He didn't want to see the movie, and it wasn't like Ramsay would let her, anyway.

But Ramsay wouldn't have let her have lunch with Jon, let alone buy it for him, and she'd done it anyway.

Jon was studying her.

"Yeah. You have my number," he said lightly. "I don't have any plans this weekend...or any weekend, to be honest, except for work," he added. There was that half-grin again, so brief and fleeting. Out of nowhere she wondered what it would be like to kiss his mouth when he was half-smiling, then was horrified and disgusted with herself.

What a ridiculous thing to think. Maybe she was losing her mind. This was a bad idea. Everything about this was a bad idea.

"Okay, I’ll be in touch, then," she said, against her better judgment, and she turned on her heel and made for the elevator, faster than necessary, her heart pounding and her hands shaking.

But he had remembered her favorite book.

Why did it matter?

It didn't matter.

It shouldn't have mattered.

But, somehow, it mattered quite a lot.

**Jon**

"You're just filibustering the investigation so you can have lunch with stunning redheads," Pypar complained as they watched Sansa flit off to the elevator, long hair flying like a coppery banner behind her.

Maybe he was.

Jon turned away from Sansa and fisted his hands, trying to turn his feelings away from how Sansa had looked when she had mentioned Arya. It had been hard to breathe for his sadness. He felt Mormont staring at him and he avoided the older man's eyes as the group walked to the conference room where they were set up.

"Haven't seen the White Knight in a while," Mormont remarked in a low voice as they trailed behind the others. "I had thought we were rid of him at last."

"I grew up with her," Jon defended himself immediately. "We were just getting lunch."

Mormont's nickname for him and his savior instincts had always rankled. It was only marginally better than his  _other_  nickname, given to him by an old instructor at Castle Black, which was Snow White. It had taken a  _long_  time to live that one down.

The others filed into the conference room, laughing about something, and then he and Mormont were alone in the cool marble hall. Mormont heaved a long-suffering sigh, and anger spiked in Jon.

"I taught your first criminal psychology class, Snow, so I know  _you know_  that you can't save her. Domestic abuse victims have to leave willingly. They have to make the choice  _on their own._ "

"If you can see it so clearly, then how can you stand it?" Jon asked furiously. "How can you possibly just stand by?"

"Because I know that interfering—against her wishes—will only cause more trouble for her," Mormont said sadly. "You know how difficult it is to actually  _get_  anyone for domestic violence—not to mention that it's not your job."

"It  _is_ my job," Jon countered hotly. He hadn't been this angry with Mormont in many years, but once upon a time they had clashed more or less daily. "And it’s your job, and their job." He nodded to the conference room where the other agents were. Mormont fixed him with a frank look.

"What on earth," he began plainly, "was the point of all of those criminal psychology courses if you're just going to react like any idiot? You know you can't save her. You can offer her resources, you can offer yourself as a confidante, but you _cannot fix this_ , Snow. And, in fact, it  _isn't_ your job, or my job, or their job. It's the job of local law enforcement."

"It is a classic, textbook case," Jon seethed. "Clothes that cover everything, no eye contact, loss of social and familial connections, and I'm almost positive her finances are being controlled—"

"—Yes, and like a classic case, she very likely is deeply in denial, and the harder you try to pull her away, the harder she will dig her heels in."

"No, I don't think that's true—"

"—No, you just don't  _want_  that to be true. You want to ride in on your white horse and save her from the evil, violent husband, but that is not how that ever works, and you ought to know that by now—between ten years of field experience and four years of grueling coursework. If you don't know that by now, you're an idiot."

"Fine, I'm an idiot," Jon shot back carelessly. "But she's not in denial. She didn't mention her husband even once, and—"

"—If she is still with a husband who beats her, she is in denial, and you can't fix that!" He put his hand on the doorknob. "Enough of this nonsense. We have a bomber to catch."

Seething with hot anger, Jon followed Mormont into the conference room. It was just like the old days, but this time, he was older, old enough to know that part of his anger stemmed from knowing there was truth to Mormont's words and knowing that he did not like that truth, that that truth did not align with how he wanted the world to work.

Mormont was right: the more he interfered, the more he poked and prodded Sansa about leaving Ramsay, the harder that she would cling to him. He knew this. He also knew that however much he wanted to beat Ramsay to a pulp and drag Sansa away from him, that would not be effective, either. He knew these things, and he had used this knowledge today.

After all, he had been so careful all throughout lunch. No matter how badly he had wanted to ask her about Ramsay, about Arya, about all of it, he had resisted the almost overpowering urge, going so far at times as to put his hand over his mouth to stop himself from talking, pretending to just be fidgeting. 

He had  _not_  confronted her about the fact that the bills she withdrew from her purse were all singles, and not from her wallet, and had been clearly folded together for a very long time—the way bills looked when they had been stowed away in secret, hidden maybe in a drawer, perhaps between a stack of books, or even beneath a box. He had  _not_  asked her why she was wearing such ridiculously heavy clothing in such hot weather. He had _not_  pointed out that she had gone from being a girl always prancing around in a pink leotard, chattering nonstop about her passions, her friends, her goals, her hopes, her dreams, to being a woman who was incapable of maintaining eye contact for more than a few seconds and whose lovely voice was barely audible. He had  _not_  asked her why she had been in tears when he had remembered her favorite book.

He had, in his opinion, demonstrated remarkable self-restraint. He deserved a damn medal for his self-restraint.

He knew he could help her. He had to help her. He owed it, to Robb and Arya, to help her. He owed it to Ned Stark.

But most of all, he  _wanted_ to help her. She had shown a glimmer of her real self—of Sansa Stark—when she'd asked him about his gun, when she had talked about why she loved being a copy editor. He knew he could bring Sansa Stark back to life.

He did not examine why he wanted to help her. 

It was related to the way his heartbeat quickened at the way her soft red hair ghosted along her pale neck when she turned her head; related to the fact that he had never, not even once, allowed himself to touch her; related to the fact that every time they had ever been alone together, growing up, he had found a way to get away from her.

There was something shameful, something secret there.

He would not examine it. He did not want to know.

**Sansa**

On the way home, as giddy and loose as if she were drunk, Sansa stopped at the nearby used bookstore, Luwin’s Bookshop, and bought a copy of  _The Hobbit._

She knew she didn’t have it, either at home or at work. She had always had an aversion to  _Lord of the Rings._ Perhaps it was because she had always associated it with Jon. The cover was beginning to fall off; it was an older copy, perhaps from the eighties, and when she checked the inside, she saw that she was right.

Someone had once loved this copy. Some teenaged boy in a hoodie had carried this portal to Middle Earth in his school bag for every lonely lunch period.  

She carried it in her hand all the way home, rather than stow it in her purse. Even though she knew it was not Jon’s copy, she somehow felt that it was. She somehow felt that she was reaching back nearly twenty years in time to that angst-filled boy with the sad eyes and sly smile, always in black hoodies, nose in his copy of  _The Hobbit,_ brooding in the back of the classroom, and touching his sweet hand. How different that boy looked from this angle: how lost and gentle he seemed, whereas before he had seemed so cold, so rough, and so unkind.

She clutched the worn, creased paperback in her hand, and walked through the golden evening. The sun had come out, setting the wet streets aglow with golden light, and for the first time in a very long time, she thought that the world was beautiful.

**Jon**

“Looking for something?” The elderly shopkeeper in Luwin’s Bookshop startled Jon. He was peering at cracked spines, crouching before the shelf titled  _M—Q._

“A book,” he said dryly, earning a chuckle from the old man. “ _Persuasion_ , by Jane Austen.”

“For a girl?” the shopkeeper guessed shrewdly, and he waved Jon over to another section.

“No. For me.”

The shopkeeper wisely turned away from Jon before pulling a face, but Jon saw it in the reflection of the windows all the same.

“Here you are. This one isn’t as popular,” he said, pulling a worn paperback from the shelf and passing it to Jon. It looked like it was from the sixties or seventies: the cover was a pen and ink drawing, and the spine was cracked. The pages were so yellowed they were almost gold.

“Thanks.” Jon thumbed the curled, warped edge of the pages and imagined a fourteen-year-old Sansa doing the same thing. It wasn’t her copy, of course, but he could picture her holding it, curled up in her room in the window seat that he had helped Robb and Ned build between two bookcases.

He had forgotten about building that window seat. He remembered, out of nowhere, kneeling on the carpet in her sweet-smelling room, being sixteen and angry—and, truthfully _, so_ horny, too, and that had made the anger so much worse—and sweating as he watched Robb badly hammer a nail into place, with Ned softly laughing at his son’s clumsy workmanship, and gently correcting him. He had felt uneasy the whole time about being in Sansa’s room, as though they were in  _his_  room and about to discover something private. He had been so anxious to finish the window seat and had been so relieved when they were done.

At the time he had told himself it was because he found Sansa to be too annoying and too girly and too preppy to be tolerated. Her walls were painted a pale, ballet-slipper pink, and she had a canopy bed—he had helped Robb and Ned build that, too, actually—and the bed was piled with stuffed animals; and her desk, neatly arranged, had a corkboard over it with pictures of all of her best friends—she had had so many, and he had had so few—and perhaps pictures of a member of a boy band, and little notes passed in class, and assignments she had aced, for Sansa had been obsessive about her grades.

“Two dragons,” said the shopkeeper as he led Jon back to the cash wrap, a little wooden structure dwarfed by the splendid forest of towering bookcases around them. Jon almost never bothered to carry cash anymore, but he had three dragons crumpled messily in his wallet, and he handed all three to the shopkeeper and told him to keep the third, and then, in a dream-like state, wandered back out into the humid, golden evening, with his suit jacket over his arm and Sansa’s most favorite book in his hand. 


	3. Chapter Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is kind of long. Sorry about that. 
> 
> I've been trying to include quotes from both Austen and Tolkien that reflect the themes of the chapter. Austen is easy; Tolkien is HARD. 
> 
> Thanks for all of the wonderful comments and kudos!

 

_“There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart.”_

_\- Jane Austen_

_“Living by faith includes the call to something greater than cowardly self-preservation.”_

_\- J. R. R. Tolkien_

**Sansa**

Sansa and Ramsay lived on the Street of Steel, a once-industrial area that had become very cool about ten years ago, and was now an established posh neighborhood. It was all converted brick warehouses and romantic, leafy sycamores and young, cool parents with expensive strollers. Tonight, the street was cast in rosy copper from the sunset, and the leaves were glowing, and the air was thick with sound of children playing.

It could not have been a more picturesque place to come home to, but her dread only mounted with each step closer. As she approached the house, Sansa finally hid _The Hobbit_ in her purse, sad to let go of it.

They lived in a handsome brownstone, one that her copy editor salary would never afford but which Ramsay’s revenue from his various tech ventures could easily afford, and he never let her forget it. In the beginning, she had adored the brownstone, with its high ceilings and fireplaces in every room, and its crown molding and deep windows. Now she barely even saw it.

But tonight as she unlocked the front door, she abruptly remembered the window seat she had had growing up, and suddenly saw the windows in a new light. _These windows are big enough for a window seat,_ she thought, dropping her keys in the bowl beneath the large, gilded-edge mirror in the entrance hall.

Jon had helped build that window seat, and for years she had whiled away so many lazy afternoons curled up with a book, tea, and a blanket, meandering in her latest fictional world. But of course, the idea of Ramsay building her a window seat was laughable, for so many reasons.

“Ramsay?” she called, voice bouncing off the high ceilings.

She poked her head into the first floor living room, which often doubled as Ramsay’s office. He was there in the growing darkness, face turned eerie blue by the glow of his laptop, one hand fisted in his hair as he scowled at something on his screen.

“Don’t talk,” he grit out, without looking up from his monitor. He had a stack of messy paperwork beside him, paperwork that looked like complicated financial documents. Only financial matters could truly ruffle Ramsay, and she suddenly felt that they had been precariously balancing on stilts this whole time. She suddenly keenly sensed how transient such a posh home—even one that looked as old money as this one did—could truly be.

A normal wife might have asked her husband to tell her what was wrong, and a normal husband might answer. But they were not normal, and so Sansa said nothing more, and slipped up the stairs to their bedroom with her new book, feeling like she had sneaked a live animal into their house.

Upstairs, in the second sitting room where they often entertained Ramsay’s friends, she hid _The Hobbit_ behind a stack of coffee table books displayed on the mantle, the thickest being on the painter Melisandre, who was known for her gory, sexual work. Sansa had never liked her work, but it had been the only art Ramsay had ever shown the slightest interest in, and she had desperately jumped at the chance to find some common ground between them.

 _See! It makes sense that we’re married. We both like art!_ she thought sardonically, sliding the stack of books back into place. _Never mind that that art in particular makes me sick._

Hours later, after Ramsay had at last gone to bed, she sneaked through the silent house to the sitting room with a mug of tea. She slipped the book from its hiding place, and curled up beneath one of the tall windows on a couple of sofa cushions, wrapped herself in a blanket, and wandered off to Middle Earth.

**Jon**

“I read _Persuasion_ last night,” Jon admitted as they turned away from the food truck, falafels in hand. He’d not had falafel in years but Sansa had suggested it. He felt Sansa’s gaze jerk to him, and he avoided her eyes by fixing the wax paper and foil wrapping of his falafel. He had been up all night, sprawled beneath his air conditioner on the floor, reading.

“Y-you did? All in one night?” They fell into step, walking aimlessly. It was sunnier than the day before, and therefore even more unpleasantly hot, but even so, she was clad again in long sleeves and long pants.

 _Don’t interfere,_ he told himself, and he took a larger bite than necessary of his falafel.

He wasn’t going to interfere.

He was just going to be there for her. 

He definitely was not going to interfere. “What a coincidence. I read _The Hobbit_ last night,” she confessed shyly. They took a left, down a shaded side street that was a little less crowded, and he was relieved to be out of the thick of the crowd.

“All in one night?” he parroted when he’d swallowed his food and he heard her laugh.

She had read _The Hobbit_ because he liked it. He sneaked another glance at her, his chest tightening.

“They’re not exactly long books, I guess,” Sansa pointed out.

She had offered to pay again, drawing folded singles from her purse, but he had begged off, insisting that it was his turn to pay. He’d seen her wallet in her purse, but she hadn’t pulled the money from her wallet.

He had not allowed himself to point out that normal people paid with the money in their wallet, not folded money from a secret compartment in their purse.

“So why is _Persuasion_ your favorite? Why not the famous one— _Pride and Prejudice_?” he asked, instead of saying any of the things he wanted to say.

“I take it you weren’t impressed,” she said dryly. “The romance always spoke to me so much more, because Anne and Wentworth were friends, good friends, and part of the beauty of their reunion is that these two like-minded people—who genuinely missed each other’s company—are coming back together. They don’t just have mindless sexual tension—they have so much more than that.

“All of the romance was built on this common understanding, this _recognition_ , between them, and at the beginning of the book before their reunion you see how much Anne misses that common understanding. No one really gets her; everyone _likes_ her, but no one _understands_ her. She’s so lonely, even though she is surrounded by people. And it’s that lack of friendship that’s made her lose her ‘bloom,’ so to speak.

“I just love how she becomes lovely again as he comes back into her life, and how it’s their emotional connection that brings her back to life. It’s not just arch banter while dancing, or heated arguments, or physical longing; it’s that they _get_ each other. Their eyes always find each other’s in a crowded room; they have the same estimations of the people around them; they have similar reactions to the things that other people do. It’s their friendship that brings the beauty back into her life. And, um, well, I just always liked that, I guess,” she finished a bit lamely, tucking her hair behind her ear.

She fell silent, clearly embarrassed. Fifteen-year-old Sansa would not have been so embarrassed about talking about her favorite book, he thought, and he buried another stab of anger.

“I did like it,” Jon conceded slowly. “It wasn’t what I’d been expecting. I thought it was going to be—well, arch banter while dancing, and heated arguments, honestly. And I wasn’t expecting to recognize so many of the people. I think I’ve met every single one of the characters at some point.” He paused. “What did you think of _The Hobbit?_ ”

“No Aragorn,” she said disappointedly, and he couldn’t help but laugh. “I liked it more than I expected I would. It was less serious than I was expecting; it was a lot more silly and joyful. But I guess the actual trilogy is far more serious.”

“It is. I never cared much for _The Hobbit,_ out of all of the books, truthfully.” He glanced at her. “No Aragorn,” he explained, earning a laugh.

“Do you still have your old copies?" 

They passed by a street performer crooning out a Van Morrison song on a modified violin, and he watched Sansa impulsively fish out one of those single-folded bills from her purse and toss it into the performer’s overturned hat, which had only garnered coins thus far. He wanted to roll his eyes at her compulsive generosity. She _would_ give her secret money to a shitty street performer.

“Yeah, I do. I think those are the only books I’ve kept,” Jon said, fishing a bill out of his own wallet and copying her, if only because she had shamed him into doing so.

They walked away from the street performer, and now it was his turn to be impulsive: he turned down a narrow side street, too narrow for cars, lined with pear trees. They were only going further from the Tarly Publishing building. Maybe they could just keep walking, wandering their way along side streets to safety. “I’ll lend you the next book, if you want.”

“I’d love that.” He pictured her curled up in that window seat. How many thousands of times had he passed by her room, catching a glimpse of her biting her nail—her only unsightly habit—as she eagerly turned a page, the sun setting her hair aglow?

They began walking back toward her office. It had to end, of course. He was keenly aware of every second ticking by, trickling away like the last water. And today, maybe tomorrow, would be his last day that he could force the NW to linger in the Tarly building; and after that…then what?

Mormont would tell him: _and then nothing, White Knight._ He could not help Sansa. She did not believe she deserved to be helped. There was nothing he could do about that—according to the books and training, at least. “So,” she said suddenly, as they approached the Tarly building, back in the roar of the wide avenue, “how long will the investigation go on? Or…are you not allowed to talk about it?” she added apologetically.

“Don’t know; but I think we’ll wrap up our work in your building in the next day or two,” he replied, slowing his steps slightly.

“Oh, that’s too bad.” She paused. “I mean, not that it’s too bad that you’ll be done. You know what I mean,” she said hastily. “I was already getting used to having a lunch buddy, is all I meant.”

“Me too. I think this is the first I’ve taken lunch in like five years,” Jon agreed, thinking of his windowless office and his Styrofoam cups of oily black coffee that usually served as his lunch.

“But, um, if you still want to, maybe we can see that movie this weekend,” she was saying as they wove around a band of schoolchildren lining up at another food truck. “I never check my mobile, so you can get ahold of me through email,” she added.

It was just another thing that Jon did not allow himself to point out, just another thing that killed him. _Your mobile is in your pocket and has been the whole time. So is it that you don’t check it, or is it that you know that someone else does?_

He did not point out this fact. He did not point out that this was not how love was supposed to work. He did not point out that Sansa Stark, the girl curled up with a book in the window seat, had been so utterly beloved that three men would happily spend their Saturday afternoon building her a window seat, instead of watching sports like they all actually wanted to, and that that girl deserved better than this.

He congratulated himself, weakly, on his self-restraint, and told himself that the books had been written for a reason, that this was an established pattern, that he could not help Sansa further than this.

But how much longer could he keep this up?

“What’s your email, then?” He pulled out his own mobile to take it down. They stood outside of the building as he typed it into his mobile, and he was glad that Mormont wasn’t seeing this.

“Maybe Saturday,” she suggested. “During the day. I think I have plans at night.”

“Yeah, whenever is fine,” he said. They each looked away, neither sure of what to do now. A hug would have been the normal thing. Even though he was not one for hugging, he would have done it reflexively, knowing it was normal and expected.

But he had never let himself touch Sansa.

No, that wasn’t right; he had never touched Sansa.

It wasn’t a question of letting, or of allowing.

Of course it wasn’t.

It wasn’t like he had ever _wanted_ to touch her. It wasn’t like he had had to actively stop himself from trying to.

“Anyway, have a good rest of your afternoon,” he said, and she waved, then seemed to decide that was an odd thing to do, and tucked her hair behind her ear and blushed and hastened into the building without him.

**Sansa**

“Well you look _gorgeous_ ,” Margaery said with catlike interest as Sansa burst back into the air-conditioned office. “Are you wearing makeup?” she stage-whispered past a cupped hand.

“I always wear makeup,” Sansa said defensively. Margaery looked embarrassed.

“Oh, of course! I guess you do it so well that I just assume it’s your natural look. New blush, then?” she smoothed over hastily.

“No. But I _was_ just walking around outside in the heat, so maybe that’s it,” Sansa replied, and then felt sick with fear. She tried not to draw attention to the outside temperature—it usually turned into a question of why she wore long sleeves. But luckily Margaery didn’t take it in that direction.

“Maybe that’s it,” she said slyly. “Or maybe it’s the _gorgeous_ NW agent I saw you walking with,” she added innocently. “I always say sex is the best skin care.”

“I’m married!” Sansa said indignantly.

She would not think about sex with Jon. That would just be such an odd thing to think about. She would not think about sex with Jon. She would _not_.

“Right, I know, but a little flirting goes a long way in spicing things up, doesn’t it?” Margaery giggled with a sly wink, and Sansa couldn’t help but smile at her antics anyway—even if they did drum up questions she would have preferred be left unasked.

Sansa went back to her office and fell into a black hole of obsessively checking her personal email—her secret email—and not actually accomplishing any work.

She had created the email specifically to correspond with her family after Ramsay had read her last email to Robb, but Robb’s last email back to her had been so terse, so visibly frustrated with her distance, that she had not found the courage to use this new address yet.

It was just another reason that she faltered every time she imagined running away, and telling Mom and Robb everything. They would be so disgusted with her for letting it happen in the first place. She could just picture their faces if they ever saw the bruises. Mom had not raised her to be a wilting, weak, fearful, battered woman—yet here she was. Mom had raised her to be strong-willed, independent, and fearless.

 _You always thought Arya was the problem child, Mom,_ she thought miserably, staring out the window. _But look how different things are now._

 _She_ was the failure, the mess, the embarrassment.

But for some reason Jon seemed to like her. _Look how different things are now, indeed._ She had no idea why he suddenly liked her. She had assumed at first that he was checking up on her for Robb or Mom, but he had not asked her about either of them, or about her falling out with Arya, or about Ramsay. He had only talked to her about books, about her job. He wanted to see a movie with her.

He had remembered her favorite book—and not only that, he had _read_ her favorite book.

And it was this fact that she held close to her heart; periodically admiring for the rest of the afternoon, like a secret flower she had stolen. Its beauty was as short-lived as that of a picked flower because she knew it would fade, because she knew Jon would inevitably fade from her life too—whether she herself was pressed to push him away, or he simply pulled away on his own—but, for now, it was the loveliest thing that had ever belonged to her.

**Jon**

“So how does it usually work?”

Daenerys stared plainly at him.

“Who are you trying to save now?” she sighed, swilling her expensive red wine. Jon fidgeted with his own cheap beer, spinning the sweating glass this way and that on the table between them.

“I’m just asking.”

“Asking for a _friend_?” she guessed shrewdly, narrowing her violet eyes at him. “If it’s a first offense, it will likely be a misdemeanor, and if he can afford a good lawyer, he might not even serve time.”

“What about if there’s a lot of damning evidence?” Jon thought of Ramsay’s carelessly fine cashmere jumper. He could afford a damn good lawyer, he suspected. “Actually, what would count as damning evidence?”

“Photographs, witness reports,” Daenerys listed, looking skyward. “Rape kits. Voicemails. If they’re blue-collar, they’ll likely have a previous offense and be in the system already, for domestic violence or for some other petty crime. If they’re white-collar, it’s less likely that they’ll have been prosecuted for anything before.”

“How likely is it that he would get off?”

“He?” Daenerys prompted, leaning forward, and Jon rolled his eyes.

“Fine. I’m not asking out of pure curiosity,” he conceded. Daenerys arched one platinum brow at him and settled back, queen-like, in her plush velvet chair with her wine.

“I can’t give you a good answer without good details,” she informed him loftily. “So either you explain and I give you a real answer, or you keep beating around the bush and I tell you nothing that you couldn’t just get from a basic internet search.”

The posh, dimly lit bar of the Hizdahr Hotel thrummed with low, subtle electronic music, and sleekly dressed waiters and waitresses carried trays of expensive whiskey and flutes of fine champagne past them.

Jon had never felt at home here, but it was Daenerys’ favorite bar, and he had been keen to put her in a good mood. Her mood was variable, and highly dependent on whether she was getting her way or not. He loved Daenerys but he also knew her very well and knew how she worked.

“He’s the CEO of his own—”

“—Then, no,” Daenerys said at once. “It’s not going to happen.”

“Never?”

“With the kind of lawyer that a battered wife will be able to afford in that situation?” She snorted and took a long swig of her red wine. “She’ll get someone from the DA’s office—at best—who will likely be paid off by her husband. You should give up on the dream of jail time,” she said bluntly. “Unless…”

Her tone was teasing. She had been building up to this, ever the one for theatrics. He couldn’t blame her. She had worked hard, harder than anyone, for her notorious success. She might as well be allowed to enjoy it.

“Unless?” He tried not to act too interested, but his heart was pounding, and he pretended to be absorbed in drawing in the condensation from his beer on the table between them.

“Unless you let _me_ get involved. I _am_ the best, after all.”

Checkmate.

“She can’t afford you,” Jon pointed out.

“No one can. That’s why I work pro bono on cases that interest me.” Daenerys tossed her perfectly curled platinum hair. “As you clearly know, and clearly intend on exploiting.”

Dammit.

“And this would interest you?” Jon glanced up at his aunt—though she often felt more like a sister to him, as they were so close in age.

“It _could_.” She paused. “But Jon,” she said suddenly, her voice more serious, more soft, now, “you can’t do this _for_ her. _She_ has to come to me.”

“I know,” he bristled.

“Oh, you sweet, sweet boy,” she sighed, and she reached across the table and touched the back of his hand. “What am I going to do with you?” She was smiling sadly at him.

Of course, Daenerys probably knew better than anyone what Sansa was going through—she herself had escaped an abusive marriage, and it had inspired her to work exclusively in cases concerning domestic violence and abuse. Daenerys, like him, could not bear to think of people suffering, but she had become hardened in her years of practicing law to the brutality of reality. She was not the same starry-eyed idealist who had vowed to save every abused woman years ago.

But if he tried to connect them now, it might scare Sansa off.  “You can’t do this for her,” she repeated slowly, looking him in the eye.

“No, but I can be there for her.” He finished off his beer, and then set the empty glass on the table. At once a too-thin waitress fluttered past and took it from him and replaced it with another, startling him. “You forget I’m the one who has the criminal psychology degree. I do know a thing or two.”

“And yet,” Daenerys began wryly, “here you are, putting yourself in an impossible situation, when you really ought to know better.”

“It’s not impossible. She wants to leave. I know she does.”

“They always seem like they do. They always seem like they’re on an upswing, like they’re finally realizing they deserve better—and then they crumble,” she said frankly.

“You left.”

“Not everyone is me.”

“No, few people have your ego,” he snarked, and she arched a brow at him.

“Really? You’re really going to insult me when you’re trying to rope me into doing an enormous amount of probably pointless work, pro bono? Seriously?”

She sighed. “Jon, you’re going to be there for her and you’re going to get your hopes up, and you’re going to tear yourself apart trying to save her, and maybe even you both will believe you can, for a while—and then it’s going to fall apart and it will all have been a waste. And when that happens—because that _is_ what will happen—will you be okay with it?”

“I thought you got into this because you wanted to help battered women.”

“And I do. But too many of them don’t want help, and that takes away from the ones who do want my help.” She snapped her fingers for another glass of wine. He saw her eyes flick to a very pretty mixed-race girl lingering by the bar, and she fixed the girl with that infamous look she had, and the girl smiled shyly back at her. Daenerys had always excelled at dazzling people.

Then, at last, she looked back to Jon. “So when she specifically _asks_ you for resources, for help, then point her in my direction, and I’ll be happy to help, but not before then.” She glanced back at the pretty girl again slyly, then looked back at Jon. “So what’s going on with Val?”

“Nothing.”

Daenerys regarded him and let out a long-suffering sigh. “What? That ended months ago.” And truthfully it had been over long before that, and had dissolved to stolen, quick fucks in their darkened offices, and then dissolved further, to nothing at all.

“Don’t know what I’m going to do with you; I really, really don’t,” she muttered, and tossed back the rest of her wine. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go be a conqueror.” She stood, not bothering to adjust her impeccably tailored blood red shift dress, and shot the girl another look.

“A conqueror?”

“I came, I saw, I conquered,” she murmured, full lips curving appreciatively for the pretty girl. “Or, rather: I saw, I conquered, I came. Now go away,” she dismissed, waving her hand at him.

Jon finished his second beer, if only because the idea of leaving eight dragons’ worth of beer behind nauseated him. Feeling slightly sick all the same from downing a beer, he got to his feet as Daenerys leaned a full hip against the bar, already ensnaring the girl. He paid and walked out into the humid evening.

_A conqueror._

He could not help but marvel at how often sex and violence were inextricably intertwined. 

* * *

 

He had been attacking the punching bag in his flat for an hour, blasting Pearl Jam and trying to burn out some of the frustration, trying to forget how casually Daenerys had said _rape kits_ , when he heard his mobile _ping_ with a new email.

_From: Sansa Stark_

_9:47pm_

_Subject: Florian and Jonquil Times_

_Hi Jon,_

_It looks like there’s a 12:30pm showing of Florian and Jonquil at the Humfrey Theatre this Saturday, if you’re still free._

_Love,_

_Sansa_

People said so much with the things they hadn’t been asked, with the things that they said when they thought they were telling you something else.

He replied immediately.

_From: Jon Snow_

_9:48pm_

_Subject: Re: Florian and Jonquil Times_

_Sounds good. See you then._

_Love,_

_Jon_

**Sansa**

She knew how she was going to do it.

Sansa lay on her side in the dark. Behind her, Ramsay was deep asleep. He had unwittingly given her the best excuse to leave the house on Saturday afternoon tonight, even though it had cost her more bruises.

After the first time he hit her, months had gone by before it happened again. She had told herself it was a one-off, told herself that he was emotional, that he was wild and impulsive, that he was under a lot of stress. When it happened a second time, that illusion had cracked. So that time, she told herself that she had always seemed like a victim. It was her fault, really. She was so fragile, so weepy, so stupid. And then, a month later, it happened a third time. And when it happened three weeks later, for the fourth time, she had pretended it had not happened at all. Each time, enough time would pass that she could fall back into the illusion that there would be no further times, all the while knowing she was fooling herself.

But he’d never hit her again so soon after his last episode. Tonight it had happened while she had been making dinner. She had added butter to the pan while he had been walking past her, holding his bourbon, as he did often, lately.

“You know, what those thighs really need _is_ more butter, you’re right. Why don’t you add a little more?” he’d said caustically.

It had shocked her enough to look over at him in surprise. Ramsay’s cruelty was rarely in sarcastic or rude remarks. His anger felt more like a force of violent heat that came from nowhere, raging like a forest fire suddenly in a quiet afternoon. This verbal cruelty was unlike him. “Duh,” he mimicked her stupefied expression, then rolled his eyes and turned away. Her stomach had turned, as she had looked down at her thighs, no different than they’d always been.

She should have stayed silent, or agreed with him. But out of nowhere she thought, again, of how Jon’s face had looked when he had told her he had read _Persuasion._ She was holding that flower again, so lovely and so transient, in her palm.  

“You’re the one who’s gained weight, actually.” She had instantly regretted it. She heard Ramsay stop in his tracks, then turn around.

“Oh, _am_ I?”

 _Shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up._ She pushed the butter around in the pan, heard it sizzle.

“I’ve had to start buying you larges. You always used to take mediums,” she said quietly, hands shaking as she moved the butter around. She felt Ramsay behind her.

“Getting saucy while we make the sauce, are we?” Ramsay’s voice was soft, his words rushing along the back of her neck. He had always enjoyed playing with words.

She hadn’t finished making dinner; she had not been able to. Her body hurt too much. But she hadn’t shed a single tear, and, in the dark, she had slunk over to her mobile, and logged into her secret email through her browser. It was a risk, and Ramsay was a tech genius—he would easily be able to recreate her history, even if she deleted it.

It was a risk. There would be consequences.

She thought of how she had rambled to Jon about _Persuasion,_ thought about how he had listened the whole time, acted interested, hadn’t laughed at her for talking so much about a book—a romance novel, no less.

_Fuck the consequences._

She typed out the email to Jon, and hit send.

The next morning, she blew out and curled her hair, and put on her nicest blouse and full makeup, and brought Ramsay coffee in bed.

“I thought about what you said last night,” she told him as she handed him the steaming mug, “and you’re right. I _have_ gained weight, and I look awful, and you deserve better. So I’m going to join a gym.” Her voice did not waver. It was clearer, louder, than it had been in years, and she looked him directly in the eye. “I’m doing a spin class this Saturday.”

He said nothing, but regarded her warily over the cup of coffee as he took a swig. “I’m going to that gym on the Street of Sisters, Braavos Gym,” she added. “It’s expensive, but I’ll cut out my morning latte to afford it.”

“Braavos Gym,” he repeated, eyes glimmering. “I didn’t know they had spin classes.”

“Well, maybe I read their website wrong.” She hadn’t. There was one that started the same time that _Florian and Jonquil_ did.

“Maybe I’ll go with you,” he said slyly, “as I’ve apparently gotten so fat.”

Her heart gave a little shudder. How did he _already_ know? How did he _already_ suspect?

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous. You work so hard—you hardly need to waste your weekend in a spin class,” she said sweetly. “But I’d love if you came with me, of course. No one else brings their husband; we’d stand out.” She gave him her most simpering, soft look, and touched his arm. “It would make me really happy if you went with me.”

“I don’t want to go to your fucking spin class,” Ramsay snorted, and opened his laptop on his lap. “Go away; I need to read emails.”

“Love you.” She kissed the top of his head to mask her smile. 

* * *

 

Humfrey Theatre was an old, gorgeous theatre that had formerly been dedicated to stage plays and mummer’s shows, and had only recently been converted to a movie theatre. It was set away from the street, in a little square, with a fountain that had statues depicting a mummer’s play.

In the hazy, humid sunlight, the fountain was wreathed by families: little kids splashed like ducklings in the water, and parents sat on the benches around it, shading their eyes and yelling at their children. Pretty girls, self-conscious in brightly colored sundresses, waited for their dates. Amid all of this was Jon, clad in dark jeans and a dark top, standing out from all of the color.

She’d had to stop at Braavos Gym on her way here, to purchase a one-month membership so it would show up on her transactions, and then had hurried to her office to take the last of her hidden cash. It would take a long time to build up her supply again—if she even _could_ build it up again. But it would be worth it, she thought with a burst of rare joy as she approached Jon. It would be completely worth it.

She had wanted to wear her gauzy white button-up, as it was lightweight and pretty while still being long-sleeved, but it was too sheer and showed too much of Ramsay’s latest bout of rage, so she was stuck wearing a dark, heavy blouse that she knew looked odd. She saw Jon’s grey eyes flick to the long sleeves as she approached him, waving, but he said nothing on it, as usual.

“I hope you haven’t been waiting long,” she said as she reached him where he stood in the shade. He pushed away from the wall.

“No, I just got here,” he said. She realized he’d been carrying something, and he handed it to her now.

It was the first of the _Lord of the Rings_ trilogy—an old copy. _His_ copy. It was one of the few books he had kept throughout his life, and he was just passing it to her like it was nothing. She took it, glad for the sunglasses she was wearing as she was moved to tears. “Here, take it, before I forget and leave it somewhere,” he told her, looking away as she took it.

“Thanks,” she could only utter, stowing it inside her purse. She swallowed the urge to cry and was relieved when it had passed. She had always been teased for crying so easily. “Um, we should get tickets.”

“I already got them online. I was worried it’d sell out,” he said as he opened the door for her and they entered the frosty lobby.

“Oh. Well, thank you. Let me give you—”

“—No, don’t worry about it. I hate carrying cash,” he protested immediately. He handed their tickets to the usher who disinterestedly pointed them in the direction of the appropriate theatre.

She thought of her secret money, folded in her purse, and was relieved. If, by some stroke of luck, he wanted to hang out again, she would still have some secret money leftover.

“I love Martell’s work,” she confessed eagerly as they walked. “He always injects so much romance into every shot. It’s always the most beautiful shot possible. And another director I love, Mance Rayder, was a producer of the movie, so it’ll be nicely balanced by Rayder’s more blunt style.”

Jon’s lips twitched; he was trying not to laugh at her. “What?”

“Rayder directed a movie about ten years back about the NW,” he explained as they entered the stale darkness of the theatre.

It was empty. _Florian and Jonquil_ was, above all, an art film—there had never been any risk of it being sold out at twelve-thirty on a beautiful Saturday afternoon in July. “Every now and then, some clips from it circulate in the office, because it’s so exaggerated and cliche.”

“Are _any_ parts of it true?” she asked hopefully, following him to the very back row. Jon seemed to always be drawn to the back row, to the corners, to the shade.

She felt a bit like a teenager. This felt rather like a date.

But it wasn’t a date, of course.

Maybe this was just his idea of charity. Maybe Robb had asked him to be nice to her. Maybe, maybe, maybe… But nonetheless he’d read _Persuasion._ She delightedly reexamined the thought, briefly, and then hid it away again.

“No. I mean, it _was_ filmed on location,” Jon disdained as they took their seats. “So it was the right building. But that’s it. Nothing else about it was remotely accurate.”

“Luckily I’ll never have that risk,” Sansa confided, watching Jon slump so far down in his seat that his head was resting on the top of the back. “No one makes dramatic movies about copy editors.”

“No kung fu fighting in the hallways?” he asked dryly, and her shoulders shook with laughter.

“I always wish I had learned karate,” she confessed, lowering her voice to a whisper as the previews began, and wondering why she bothered. They were the only ones there. Jon angled his head towards hers, the better to hear, and she slumped slightly—against her innate urge to have perfect posture—the better for him to hear. “I always meant to take a self-defense course.”

“It saves lives,” Jon said plainly. “You really should.”

She thought of Ramsay, thought of the spin classes that she had just bought that she would never attend. Maybe Braavos Gym had self-defense classes… “I can show you some of the basics,” he said suddenly.

He wasn’t looking at her anymore; he was faced forward, eyes on the screen, as a preview for Jaime Lannister’s latest action movie, replete with explosions and femme fatales, blazed on screen. Jaime Lannister’s perfect golden hair, seemingly unaffected by age, flashed before them. “If you want,” he added.

Sansa faced forward and watched Jaime Lannister leap out of a helicopter and, absurdly, catch on the side of a building, swinging dangerously, lean legs flailing briefly before finding purchase, before the camera cut to another shot of him on a motorcycle, in a dramatic chase with a foreign villain in a crisp suit on his tail, firing a gun at him.

“ _This summer, Jaime Lannister IS…the kingslayer._ ” Cut to a shot of Jaime Lannister stalking toward a foreign emperor who was vaguely Yi Ti in appearance, hiding a gun behind his back. _No, not racist at all,_ she thought in disgust.

“Y-yeah,” she finally said, clearing her throat. “That sounds good. I’d love to learn. But fair warning: I’m a bit of a wimp.”

“And here I had you pegged for such a thug,” Jon said, earning a helpless laugh from her. She glanced at him, watched him try to stifle a laugh and fail to do so, and then they were laughing together, quietly, the noise almost drowned out by the epic orchestral swell of the end the preview for Jaime Lannister’s movie. A foreign femme fatale, dressed all in leather, slunk seductively toward him, intercut with more shots of him pulling absurd stunts.

She had dated Jaime Lannister’s nephew, and, of course, his niece was married to Robb, so it would have been natural to talk about it, but neither Jon nor Sansa commented on it. She was grateful. She didn’t like to talk about Joffrey.

“I’ve never punched someone in my life,” she admitted as the theatre quieted, briefly. The next preview was another art film. “Oh, that’s my coworker’s brother,” she said excitedly, as Loras Tyrell, heartbreakingly beautiful, filled the screen. His lovely eyes, so like Margaery’s, squinted into the distance as he stood on the edge of a cliff, wearing priest’s robes.

“It’s not about punching people. In fact, that’s probably the worst thing you can do,” Jon countered suddenly, as Loras Tyrell cried elegantly, and the camera cut to another heartbreakingly handsome man lying in a hospital bed, unconscious and bleeding, but still carefully beautiful.

“It is?”

“If you’re in a situation where you need self-defense,” Jon began insistently, “you can’t punch your way out of it, usually. Especially if you’re a woman.”

“What misogyn—”

“—No, it’s _not_ ,” Jon interrupted. “Men attack women _all the time_. Like it or not, men have that instinct, and by and large, women do not. If you’re a woman being attacked, the odds are very high that it is in a situation that has been very carefully selected to ensure the attacker’s success and not yours.”

“Like a darkened alley?”

“Or your own home,” Jon said, and she felt sick, but he continued swiftly. “It’s never going to be when you’re surrounded by friends or family, or when you’re holding a weapon, or when you even _have access_ to a weapon, or access to help.”

“So it’s hopeless,” she concluded, as Loras Tyrell’s dark robes slid off his lovely shoulders. He was crying again, and the beautiful man from the hospital bed was crying, too, as he kissed Loras sensually.

“No, it’s not hopeless at all. But you’re not likely to best them in a fistfight. You can’t win against an attacker; even professionally trained fighters aren’t guaranteed to win. The best self-defense teaches you how to _get away,_ not how to _win._ Fistfights prolong the situation, and the longer you’re stuck in the situation, the less chance you have of getting away.”

At last the preview of Loras’ movie ended, and Sansa was relieved. Sex scenes had always embarrassed her. There would probably be plenty of them in this movie, though, and she was horrified that that had only just occurred to her. Her face flamed in preemptive embarrassment.

The movie began, and they were cast in deep blue light. Sansa chanced another look at Jon, edged in violet-blue from the screen. It kissed his lean forearms and pretty lips and dark eyes, and she hugged her purse to her stomach and sank a bit in her seat. Their arms brushed.

“Sorry,” they breathed simultaneously, not looking at each other.

She would not think about kissing Jon, and she would definitely not think about sex with Jon. What a weird, abnormal thing to think of. Why was she thinking of it? She had definitely never thought about it before.

She couldn’t even remember the last time she and Ramsay had had sex. She supposed she ought to be grateful that he hadn’t yet forced himself on her.

As the music swelled, her throat tightened. She knew he had only not forced himself on her because, recently, he had been struggling to _get it up_ , so to speak, and struggling to keep it up. It had never been a problem for him before. Her only thought was that it was all the alcohol, but she couldn’t be certain. In any case it had become a source of powerful shame, and therefore rage, for him.

She tried to focus on the movie. She had loved this movie, the original version, as a teenager. Every time she had watched it, she had been sent reeling with visions of the perfect love. She had spent hours swooning on her bed, imagining and reimagining her own perfect romance, in vivid detail. And whenever she was unlucky in love—be it an unrequited crush or a poorly-behaved boyfriend—her mother would stroke her hair and tell her that sometimes, kissing frogs was an unfortunate part of finding the one who would eventually mean everything, and she would retreat to those fantasies, comforted immensely by them.

But it was impossible to focus on the movie. Here she was, sitting in a darkened movie theatre with a man she did not actually know if she were to be honest with herself, trying to be grateful that her own husband had never raped her, and trying not to think about having sex with this man she did not actually know.

Was Ramsay the one who meant everything, and she had just gotten a rotten one? Or was he just another frog? Or, maybe, was she destined to only kiss frogs? That thought was the most painful of all, yet the one that was the loudest in her head.

This had never been the plan. She had never wanted this. _No one does, you idiot,_ she chided herself, as her eyes burned. But it was shocking, when she looked at it from this angle, safely away from Ramsay for the moment, how greatly she had strayed off course. The girl who had whiled away her entire adolescence dreaming of a perfect love was now trapped in a nightmarish one.

And, from nowhere, rage erupted within her, boiling over like lava, and her eyes grew wet, not with sadness but with fury. Her lips trembled and she pressed them together to make them stop.

Sex and romance had always been inextricably intertwined, to her, and had been so important, and she was realizing she had never really had either. Maybe that was why she found sex scenes so profoundly embarrassing—because it felt like something the rest of the whole world knew about, and was in on, except her.

Jon knew about it, she thought, risking another glance at him. She had seen him in love…and she had walked in on him during sex, once, too. She tried to turn her attention back to the movie, but instead found herself sinking into a memory that she had suppressed for so long, from when she had been only sixteen.

Robb’s friend Theon had a punk rock band, _The Reavers,_ which was performing at a local club called _The Salt Wife,_ and Sansa and Jeyne had decided to attend. It was a punk rock club—all leather and studs and eyeliner and mohawks—and Robb had informed Sansa that she wasn’t allowed to go or he would tell on her to Mom and Dad. Sansa had retorted that then _she_ would tell on _him,_ and thus he had grudgingly, unhappily allowed her and Jeyne to tag along.

Jeyne had gotten into the idea of it, going so far as to wear a black leather miniskirt and fake piercings in her ears, and Sansa had wanted to dress up as well, but she knew she’d never make it out of the house like that. So she had settled for jeans and a pale pink peasant-style top that she loved specifically because the square neckline reminded her of medieval dresses.

Giggling and silly, she and Jeyne had sneaked off into the autumn night, off to the club that she would never have had the courage to set foot in had she not known that Robb and Theon would be there. They had their hands stamped, a skull wearing a baby bonnet to indicate they were underage, and entered the neon glow of the club.

It smelled like beer and another odd smell that at the time she hadn’t been able to identify, but which Jeyne had later explained to her was pot. She had been overwhelmed and more self-conscious there than when she’d walked into the hockey stadium in a medieval gown, but she was older now, and that self-assurance which had governed her childhood was already fading. They had pushed through the crush of bodies and Sansa had spotted Theon on stage, soaked in sweat and eyes wild with nervousness, which was admittedly a bit satisfying as he was usually so pleased with himself.

Robb was at the foot of the stage, cheering Theon on with some other friends while the band set up. Sansa had been all prepared to run over to them when she spotted a familiar head of wild black hair next to Robb, and her stomach had dropped.

She hadn’t known Jon would be there, but of course she ought to have guessed that he would be. He and Theon were not close the way Robb was close with both Theon and Jon, but he still often went wherever Robb did, and she supposed this club _was_ the sort of thing he would enjoy.

A redhead with her hair woven into limp dreadlocks was dancing next to him, to the music playing over the stereo, while Theon’s band set up. She was wearing a crop top, showcasing a lean waist—the sort of daring look that Sansa would have never had the courage to try out, nor the opportunity—and a leather miniskirt similar to Jeyne’s, though she wore it with far more authority than Jeyne ever would. She kept looking at Jon and laughing, throwing her head back and smacking him on the arm, earning reluctant grins from him. He seemed to like her—a lot.

She could just picture it. It would be like being around Jon and Arya, only worse because he would likely feel the need to act like even more of a jerk to impress this girl, this obviously very cool, very un-Sansa girl. And this girl would not like her, Sansa was certain of that. Girls like her never liked her, were always making snotty comments about her prissiness, her innocence, her complete and utter lack of edge. She felt her face grow hot in anticipation of the insults, as she imagined Jon’s pretty grey eyes—no, they weren’t pretty; she didn’t know where that thought had come from—rolling, and his pretty lips—why did she keep thinking that?—twisting into a half-smirk at her expense. Her throat was closing up even as she told herself that she was being ridiculous, that she hadn’t even met the girl yet and that Jon didn’t even know she was here. She felt burned even though she was making everything up.

“Oh, there’s Robb,” giggled Jeyne, who had always been bad at hiding her crush on Robb. Privately, Sansa knew that Robb would never be interested in Jeyne, though at the time she hadn’t been able to articulate why. _Because she was a follower, because she wasn’t actually that nice and I just didn’t realize it,_ Sansa would later think. “Let’s go say hi! I wanna hear him make fun of my punk rock look,” Jeyne said, grabbing Sansa’s hand and pulling her, but Sansa dug her heels in.

“I-I’m good here, actually,” she said. “You go, I’ll just save our spot here.”

Jeyne obviously did not stand as tall without Sansa: she meekly made her way over to Robb and Jon and the redhead, and Sansa watched her make a few embarrassing attempts at catching Robb’s attention. Sansa watched, only relieved that she did not have to interact with Jon, yet also angry that she felt she couldn’t. She observed Jon realize Jeyne was there, and then watched him look around, brow furrowed, until at last he spotted her over his shoulder. She offered a perfunctory smile—the kind that merely acknowledged their eyes had met, the kind that was barely nicer than a grimace—and, to her shock, he lifted his hand and waved at her, before turning back to the girl.

What the hell was _that_?

Was he really going to pretend they were friendly, that they were nice to each other?

It must have been sarcastic.

Her defensiveness rose all night, mounting every time she saw Jon glance back at her—and he did it often, _annoyingly_ often—probably looking to see how silly she looked in this crowd so he could laugh at her with his new girlfriend. Eventually Jeyne came crawling back, embarrassed, and they hung in the corner as Theon’s band played horribly, not having any fun at all and each of them deeply regretting ever having come.

Her ears ached from the music, and she felt sick, watching that redhead with Jon. At one point the girl turned to Jon, and, as though they were the only ones in the room, slung an arm around his neck and pulled him down to her level for a long, highly sexual kiss that made him blush so much that Sansa could see it even from her vantage point. The redhead smirked, elbowing Jon, and all he did was try to stifle a grin and look down at the ground. _Idiot,_ Sansa thought, then wondered why she cared.

Sansa thought of her tepid, awkward romance with Joffrey—the brother of Myrcella, whom Robb would later marry—and felt a stab of anger. Joffrey had made comments about them having sex, but when he kissed her it didn’t leave her blushing for anything other than embarrassment and a bit of shame at how much of a letdown it was. She definitely never looked disoriented and dreamy, the way Jon looked now.

At a break in the set list, Sansa slunk off to the bathroom, if for nothing more than a break from all of the noise and the obnoxious way that the redhead girl was grinding on Jon—never mind that she was nowhere near them and should not have been bothered by it—and the pathetic way that Jeyne was staring at Robb, who, in spite of looking so squeaky-clean he ought to have been in a toothpaste commercial, was fitting in as seamlessly here as he did everywhere and was having a great time. He only looked back at them maybe twice to ensure that Sansa wasn’t doing ecstasy or engaging in an orgy or anything else unseemly.

Slightly less painful punk rock came on over the stereo as Sansa pushed her way into the dark, damp hall. The walls were covered with graffiti, particularly from each band that had played the club, and posters and notes and photos were plastered to the wall. It was quieter, thankfully, and away from the crush of people. She heard a weird noise, like keening, but she didn’t think anything of it, as her ears were still ringing from the music. She stumbled around the corner in search of the bathroom, and nearly smacked into a tangle of limbs crushed against the wall.

“O-oh,” she breathed, stumbling backward.

The redheaded girl was leaning against the wall, and Jon was kneeling between her legs. One pale, freckled leg was slung over his shoulder as she dug the heel of her combat boot into his back, her hands fisted in his hair, his strong hands gripping her upper thighs, her leather skirt hitched up around her hips. When Sansa finally processed what they were doing, she let out a little yelp. “Oh, god--”

Jon jolted backward, eyes widening in horror when he saw her. His cheeks had that same high flush and his eyes looked almost black, and his lips were wet, and she watched him curse under his breath.

“Look, she wants to join in,” said the redhead in a teasing, sly voice; and Sansa flushed molten all over, turning away hastily.

“I’m so sorry,” she stammered. “I didn’t” She didn’t finish her sentence, merely walked back around the corner, reeling in horror as well as a painful, secret burning curiosity.

“That’s Robb’s little sister,” she heard Jon hiss in abject horror, and then heard the girl let out a cackle of delight.

“Oh, Jon Snow,” she heard her say, her voice so sly, so insinuating. “She’s so...cute. Nice _red hair,_ too.”

She didn’t catch Jon’s reply; she was back in the noise and the chaos of the club, and Robb spotted her and frowned, and pushed his way over to her.

“What’s wrong? Did someone offer you drugs? Did someone hit on you? Who should I kill?” he demanded over the music. “Are you okay?”

“I-I just walked in on Jon and—and that girl,” Sansa admitted, still reeling with embarrassment and an odd, misplaced anger. Who did they think they were, to be doing something like _that_ in a club?

Robb’s features instantly transformed from rage to laughter.

“Oh, Jon and Ygritte. Ew,” he commiserated, clapping her on the shoulder and laughing slightly. “Sorry you had to see that. They’re _very_ enthusiastic, and it’s gross.” He scanned the crowd. “Where’s Jeyne?”

Sansa spotted her across the club, and waved at her to join them. Jeyne brightened as Robb waved at her happily, the same way he waved at everyone, whether he knew them well or not, and Sansa recognized something in Jeyne’s hopeful face that she wished she didn’t recognize.

Over the stereo, guitars crunched as a man’s voice, smoother than she might have expected to hear against such rough music, crooned:

_I was thinking of you,_

_There was something I forgot to say,_

_Crying on Saturday night..._

She had gone home shortly thereafter with Jeyne, an awkwardness between them that she would later realize as the beginning of the end of their close friendship. She should have tried harder to get Robb to notice Jeyne, she supposed, or something like that. But at the time she hadn’t noticed Jeyne’s angst, for she had been so consumed by her own.

It had never occurred to her that men could use their mouths on women. She knew about the other way around—and certainly Joffrey had made so many hints that she ought to do it—and of course if she had thought of it, it would have occurred to her, but the sex part of her romantic fantasies were always so blurred and vague, an ellipsis at the end of a lovely sentence. Tonight, though, she was suddenly burning to know more about that secret, forbidden ellipsis. Ygritte’s moans had been so unbridled—a noise that could not be faked.

It sounded like it felt good. Really good.

She lay in her bed, trying not to think about those noises, trying not to think about how Jon’s hands had looked gripping Ygritte’s pale flesh. She felt dirty, shameful, for wondering about it. Nice girls didn’t think about this sort of thing. But she couldn’t stop wondering about the act, and wondering why Jon had been doing it.

Did he _want_ to do that?

Thinking about it had brought damp heat, still unfamiliar to her at that point, between her legs, and she hadn’t been able to sleep. No matter how she tried to concentrate on her books, or on studying, or on _anything_ else, she hadn’t been able to stop thinking of it: how his cheeks had been so flushed, how Ygritte had been pushing his face against her, grinding against his face, how when he had pulled away from Ygritte, his lips and chin had been damp.

For a long time, whenever she saw Jon, they could not look at each other, and she had sensed Robb trying not to laugh at their awkwardness. He did not know about her curiosity, and she might have died if he had found out. He also, she suspected, would have died of embarrassment had he found out, then come back to life to murder Jon, and then died again.

She wondered if Jon remembered. She wondered what had ever happened to Ygritte, wondered if he still missed her, wondered if he had really been in love with her. Looking back, she felt so silly for being so angry with Jon that night—he had done nothing wrong.

Why had they always had such pain between them, she wondered? Did he think of it the same way?

She chanced another glance at him, because she couldn’t help herself. He was staring at the screen, but he didn’t look like he was focused on it. Rather, he was simply staring ahead, arms crossed tightly over his chest. She saw a muscle in his jaw leap. He was grinding his teeth.

Was he angry? She did not know why he would be.

“Will you really teach me? Like, for real?” Her words were nearly overshadowed by Florian the fool on screen. Jon tilted his head to look at her. She hadn’t been prepared for the eye contact, but somehow she couldn’t look away. His eyes looked black in the darkness.

She had never realized how long his lashes were, how pretty they were.

Or maybe she had. Fine, she always had.

He didn’t speak right away. He studied her; his brows knit together so briefly, in a look of something like pain, before he smoothed his features.

“Yeah. Of course I will.”

They each looked away, settled back into their seats.

She was overcome with the urge to hug him, to touch him, to thank him—not just for this but for everything—but she did none of those things.

She didn’t know if he had felt the same pain that she had between them, but it clearly didn’t matter now. He was being kind to her, now—kinder than anyone had been in a long time. 

She had to do something for him. She wanted to do something for him. She just didn’t know what it would be, yet.

* * *

Ramsay wasn’t home when she got back to their house. She’d changed into gym clothes on her way home and, nervously, had run around a bit in the heat, to make her lie more believable in case he was home. She’d gotten plenty of odd looks for running around in this heat in long sleeves, long pants, and carrying an overstuffed purse, but it hardly mattered, because she was consumed with thoughts about Jon.

It wasn’t hockey season, yet, so she couldn’t do anything for him that involved hockey, and besides that, she wasn’t sure that hockey tickets would have meant anything to him the way his kindness had meant so much—had been so utterly transformative—to her. But in spite of her anxiety, it had been so long since she had had someone in her life that she _wanted_ to do anything for that she was filled with delight every time she thought of it.

Their house was cool and dark when she unlocked the door. She didn’t know where Ramsay might be, but she relaxed as she dropped her keys in the bowl, per her routine. She tried to stifle a grin but, in the mirror over the little table where she kept her keys, she spotted her reflection.

She was flushed, her eyes bright. She looked ten years younger. Her skin was gleaming with sweat from having run around, and her hair was mussed, but she looked so happy that she hardly recognized herself.

When had she last been this happy? She fought down the impulse to text Jon. That would have been foolish. She couldn’t do that. But she wanted to. She didn’t even know what she would say; she just wanted to continuously be connected. They had agreed to meet on Tuesday night for her first self-defense lesson, and even that seemed too far away.

She padded upstairs to the bathroom for a shower. The bathroom, done in old-fashioned marble, was significantly cooler than the rest of the house, and in the safety of the bathroom she shed her heavy clothing. Her body was covered in bruises, but her eyes were bright and her cheeks rosy, and she thought that maybe, just maybe, she might still be pretty.

She sneaked _The Fellowship of the Ring_ out of her purse, once safely tucked away in the bathroom, and locked the door. She sank down onto the cool tiled floor, and began to read, ears pricked for any sign of Ramsay.

She had an hour or so to herself, lost in Middle Earth, touching the same pages that Jon had thumbed through so many years ago, so many times, and when she heard the door click downstairs, she leapt up, hid the book in one of her drawers with her makeup, and turned on the shower.

Heart pounding, she stood under the scalding water, thinking of Jon.


	4. Chapter Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've purposefully not clearly defined that Jon and Sansa are cousins because it doesn't have a huge impact on the story. 
> 
> Thanks for the lovely comments and kudos!

  _“None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives.” – Jane Austen_

_“And then her heart changed, or at least she understood it; and the winter passed, and the sun shone upon her.” – J. R. R. Tolkien_

**Jon**

Tonight Sansa would be coming over to learn self-defense.

He would not teach her inside his apartment, even though he had a mat under his punching bag in his bedroom that would have been ideal for the purpose. Therein lay dragons. He wasn’t entirely sure of what the dragons were, precisely, or he told himself that he didn’t know, but at the very least he knew that Sansa could not be in his bedroom.

And besides, he was embarrassed for her to see too much of his life. His apartment was undecorated and bare of any unnecessary furniture, and, looking around and seeing it through new eyes, his life suddenly seemed so pathetically  barren. His bedroom, in particular, was grim: nothing but an old mattress on a frame he had got secondhand from Sam when he’d gotten married and moved in with his wife, and his air conditioner blocking most of the only window, and his punching bag and the mat beneath it.

Luckily, there was a basement “gym” in his building that was a sad little concrete-floored room with some gym mats and an exercise bike that had probably been there since before either of them had been born. This had the advantage of not only not being near any beds, but also in a place that other building tenants could access, which could kill any potential intimacy. So before Sansa arrived, he went into the basement gym and wiped off all of the dusty, filthy mats with disinfectant, grimacing at the filth that came away on the paper towels.

Sansa had promised she would arrive at seven-thirty and had insisted on bringing dinner to share, and sure enough at exactly seven-thirty on the dot, his bell rang. He had been pacing back and forth, cleaning in a scattered sort of way. His apartment wasn’t messy or dirty by any means but he had never realized how shabby everything was, and kept cleaning as though that could take away the shabbiness. When the bell rang, he stowed his cleaning supplies and drew in a deep breath before opening the door.

He could do this. Whatever he might sacrifice, whatever struggle he might encounter, there was the chance that this might give Sansa confidence—confidence enough to start to see her own worth. He would have happily walked on hot coals if he thought that might help her leave Ramsay.

And, fine, it also meant he got to spend time with her. There was nothing wrong with wanting that. They had grown up together, after all. He still talked to Arya all the time, still visited her on his vacation time, still spent weekends at Robb’s home. This was exactly the same. Definitely.

Sansa was standing in the dark hallway, holding up a bag of takeaway.

“Do you like curry?” She was wearing an oversized hoodie that she was drowning in, and long black leggings. He had guessed that she would be over-dressed, but it still hurt to see.

But her eyes were bright and she looked so nervous and shy that it tightened like a band around his chest, making it hard to breathe normally. He fisted his hands; he would not touch her.  

“I think so,” he told her, opening the door a little wider to let her in. “I’ll put it in the fridge for now and we can head downstairs.”

He heard her walk into the main room behind him as he put the paper bag in the refrigerator. He felt strangely clumsy and embarrassed, and suddenly noticed how weirdly _yellow_ the light in his kitchen was, and how the stains that had been on the kitchen tiled floor forever looked so grim. He had become more or less blind to them since he had moved in. When he had first moved into the apartment, he had only cared that it was his own space and that it was close to the NW King's Landing headquarters.

He turned back to Sansa, and she was peering through the open door into his bedroom with interest. When she saw him come back in, she blushed and quickly spun away from the doorway to his bedroom.

“I don’t mean to snoop—I just saw the punching bag,” she explained hastily. “Do you actually use it?”

“Yeah, pretty often.” _All the time._ He rubbed at the back of his neck. “I’ve never been much for decorating, as you probably noticed,” he added uncomfortably, gesturing to the space around them.

He had a desk made of two card tables pushed against the wall, which held his computer and an extra monitor, and piles of paperwork and thick folders on cases. Across the room was a sagging couch he’d got secondhand, which he only used when he was taking naps from pulling all-nighters. Since he slept so poorly on it, it was a guarantee that he wouldn’t oversleep, like he might in his bed.

“No pictures,” she observed.

“Oh, yeah. I always forget about that sort of thing,” he admitted, leading her out of the apartment with haste. “There’s a little gym in the basement and it has some mats, so we’ll go there,” he explained, locking his door and letting out a breath in relief.

**Sansa**

Sansa followed Jon down the narrow, poorly lit stairwell, its walls peeling and grim. It was stiflingly hot, which did not bode well—if it was this hot in the basement, she would have a harder time getting away with not taking off her sweatshirt.

She tried not to notice how Jon looked but she found herself looking anyway, studying him. He was wearing a grey tee and black gym shorts. He was as lean as ever, and even with the tee loose as it was she could still see how hard his body was, how taut with muscle it was, in the way the cotton hung on his body. He had always been strong but lean; she had always secretly admired his body. He had been the slimmest build of anyone on his hockey team, she remembered, but by far the fiercest fighter, and the fastest on the ice, too. She had always secretly thrilled in watching him skate up and down the ice so effortlessly, so fast he was merely a blur. He clearly did not even think about maneuvering on the ice. It was second nature to him. It always had made her heart race, as she jealously imagined how that sort of freedom might feel.

Would they have to touch? She had been kept awake wondering for the past few nights. They _would_ have to, of course.

But they had never touched before, at least, not intentionally.

Even at Robb’s wedding, during the reception, there had been an uncomfortable moment where it would have been natural for them—he as the best man, she as the maid of honor—to dance together. Yet even then Jon had avoided it as though she had been covered in scorpions. As it had not been a traditional ceremony—Myrcella and Robb had insisted on something more informal and relaxed—they had not had to walk down the aisle together, so he had been spared of that, too.

She had picked out her own dress as the maid of honor, as Myrcella had not wanted to be controlling—years of a toxic, controlling mother had made her perhaps lean too far in the other direction—and Sansa had initially felt so beautiful in her pink silk strapless tea-length dress and rose gold heels. But apparently Jon had disagreed, as the idea of dancing with her for even five minutes was evidently too horrible to bear. And yet she had felt his eyes on her the whole night, even though he had not appeared to look at her once.

As much as she had enjoyed the wedding—she _loved_ weddings, and Robb and Myrcella’s was so happy—Jon’s thorough rejection had admittedly stung. Even now, so many years later, it still stung to remember it, particularly as she had been so prepared to be nice to him that evening. She had allowed herself, generously, to think that he looked quite handsome in his tuxedo, and had even been prepared to tell him so, until he had so harshly rebuked her. She’d felt like a fool for thinking he looked handsome.

“It’s grim down here,” she remarked, just for something to say, as they got to the basement floor and passed the boiler room. She heard Jon scoff.

“It’s grim everywhere in this building.”

“Why do you live here, then?” she pressed as she followed him into the little gym. It was empty, and windowless, and just as stiflingly hot as the stairwell. The walls were concrete, the floor was concrete, and the ceiling was darkened with odd stains. In the corner an ancient exercise bike was leaning against the wall. But the mats were glossy and clean, and smelled of disinfectant. _He must have cleaned them,_ she realized abruptly, as Jon turned to face her.

Why would the same man who had gone out of his way to avoid dancing with her all those years ago now clean off the mats for her?

The more she thought on it, the less his kindness made sense, in light of decades of tension and pain between them.

“It’s close to the office. It’s cheap.” He shrugged, then kicked off his trainers. He had nice calves, she noticed, ashamed of herself for noticing, so she busied herself with kicking off her own trainers. “Okay, we’ll start with the most basic technique, which is getting yourself out of someone’s grip.”

“Getting right into it,” she observed.

“Well, I want curry,” he said, and it took her a moment to realize he was kidding, that he was teasing her. “Um, is it okay if I—” he reached out, his hand tentative, “—grab your arm?”

“Oh, sure.” She stepped closer, face blazing, and held out her arm for him.

One strong hand closed around her forearm, and she stifled a flinch of pain and stared down at his hand on her arm. Everything was too warm, and he was too close. Her skin tingled all over at the contact in a rush that left every hair standing on-end.

She could smell his laundry detergent, she thought, clinging to his tee shirt. Maybe his deodorant, too, just faintly. And maybe toothpaste. And his skin. The scent gave her the ridiculous urge to bury her face in the crook of his neck. She didn’t know where it had come from; she didn’t know what purpose such an action might serve.

“If I’m grabbing you like this,” he began, his voice gentler, “your first instinct is going to be to pull, but that’s the worst thing you could do, because you’ll likely sacrifice your center of gravity. Try it.”

She pulled backward and swayed, just as he had said. Her arm throbbed, painfully, under his grip, but she would rather die than show any pain.

“Right,” she said, still looking downward at his hand on her arm.

“So, what you’re going to do is rotate your wrist, like this.” He let go of her arm and, without warning, took her hand and closed it over his forearm. She could feel the muscles and tendons shifting beneath his skin as she tightened her grip, then as he rotated his wrist, swiftly breaking out of her grip before she had even had the chance to think to hold on tighter. “Now, you try.”

He took her arm again and she didn’t flinch, then rotated her wrist and felt him let go. “That’s right,” he encouraged. “Now this time, I’m going to hold on a little harder, so you’ll have to use some force.”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” she protested.

“You won’t,” he said, trying not to laugh. “I promise.”

He took her arm again, and she looked up into his eyes before twisting her wrist—but he still held on. “A little harder this time,” he said, not looking away, watching her carefully.

She wished his eyes did not see so much.

She tried again, but couldn’t get out of his grip, and her heart began to pound. She thought of Ramsay, thought of him grabbing her wrist, and that same boiling rage she had felt the other day seemed to erupt within her, and she furiously spun out of his grip, swinging too hard and stumbling backward.

“Sorry,” she said, smoothing her hair as she felt him reach out, fast and instinctive, to help steady her. Her forearm was throbbing.

“No, that was good—let’s do it again.”

They did try it again—probably two hundred times, with slight variations on Jon’s grip, on his placement to her, and on the way she twisted free. An hour later, overheated and her arms pulsing with dull pain, they finally relented, and went back upstairs to Jon’s apartment.

“You’re a natural teacher,” she said as they walked back up the steps. She heard Jon scoff ahead of her. She tried not to notice the way the muscles in his calves tensed so beautifully with each step.

“You’re a natural student. Thought you were going to take out a notebook and gel pens and start making a study guide,” he muttered.

“You did well in school _too,_ ” she countered, feeling childish, slightly out of breath as she climbed behind him. “In spite of all of the teen angst and punk rock, you still did well.”

“Sans gel pens, somehow,” he parried. Back in his flat, they stood in the heartbreakingly grim yellow light of the kitchen as he reheated the curry, and they ate standing, leaning their hips against the countertop behind them. “It’s good,” Jon said at last. “I guess I do like curry.”

“I never get it right when I make it myself, somehow. Something’s always off.”

“I bet it’s good.” He wasn’t looking at her as he spoke.

Sansa thought of the professional-grade stove in her and Ramsay’s home, of the art books so masterfully stacked on the mantle, of the dozens of photographs of them, some in black and white, dotting various surfaces so tastefully. She had spent countless hours of her life decorating that house, and yet this grim, tiny flat already felt more like a home to her than that house did.

And then, out of nowhere, she was hit with a bolt of inspiration.

She knew _exactly_ what she was going to give Jon.

Just thinking about it made her feel like she might just levitate. “Why are you grinning?” he asked suspiciously, drawing her attention back to the present moment. She watched him wash off his plate, then set it in the dishwasher. Wordlessly he took hers as well, their fingertips brushing.

“Nothing,” she said innocently. “I should go. Thank you—for everything.” She chewed on her lip. “Same time on Thursday?”

“Yeah, that should work. Depends on when I leave the office,” Jon said, walking her to the door. “Let me drive you back—”

She felt sick; she thought of Ramsay’s pale blue eyes taking in Jon, seeing so much more than just the surface. After all, that was what made Ramsay so truly terrifying: he was _good_ at reading people, perhaps as good as Jon.

“—There’s no need; I like to have the walk—”

“—At least part of the way,” he interrupted, avoiding her eyes. She watched him grab his keys from the makeshift desk. There was a stack of pictures on the desk spilling out from a folder, of something that looked like severed, bloody limbs, but she only caught a glimpse. “This isn’t the nicest neighborhood, and it’s late.”

Outside, it had evidently rained, hard, while they had been practicing, but the rain had stopped, and steam was still rising from the pavement, giving the world an eerie, mysterious, dangerous feel. The sharp tang of the summer air after rain made her achingly think of being a teenager again, for reasons she could not identify. The street around them was silent, as though they were the only people left in this strange, foggy world.

“It’s like Middle Earth, or something,” she said as they walked to his car, parked a little ways down the block. Jon glanced back at her with a slight grin. “It just looks sort of magical, with all of the steam,” she explained, feeling silly.

“It makes me miss the north,” Jon replied, and up ahead a dark car’s taillights blinked as he unlocked it.

“Me too.”

Jon opened the passenger door for her quickly, then circled around to the driver’s side. “…Do you think you’ll ever go back?” she asked as they each got in and shut the doors.

“The only way I could would be to become an instructor at the academy,” Jon replied. “At Castle Black, I mean. I’ve thought about it a lot, especially for when I get older.” He started the car and she tried not to notice the lean twist of muscle in his forearm as he turned the key, his skin edged in silver from a light outside of the car. “What about you?”

It was an innocent and natural question but it made her stomach clench, for so many reasons.

“I want to,” she admitted. “I don’t know if it will ever happen, though.”

His car was clean but beat-up, just as tidy yet shabby as his flat. She knew NW agents probably made a decent salary so it was likely that he simply could not be bothered to purchase a new car, and she thought, again, of her enormous house, and the enormous mortgage that it came with, and Ramsay’s gleaming, brand-new car, and the closet full of the finest cashmere, and the grossly, costly dinners out so many nights each week. It once had dazzled her, but now it sickened her. It cost too much—not just the money, but the weight on their life. She had thought she wanted a glamorous lifestyle, with fine things, but lately they didn’t have the same appeal.

“I’m on the south side, on the Street of Steel,” she said as he pulled out from his parking space. It was dark, now, and the neighborhood around him was quiet. “Oh, I’m almost done _The Fellowship,_ ” she told him as they paused at a light. It cast the inside of the car in melancholy red. The skin of his arms looked so smooth. Now she knew what it felt like to touch his arms. He glanced over at her.

“What do you think?”

She had had the ridiculous urge to hold the book to her each night when falling asleep, but of course, she couldn’t risk having such a precious item in front of Ramsay, so she had restrained herself.

“I like Aragorn,” she joked, watching his lips twist into a grin before he let himself laugh. “I remember one time you fell asleep in the backyard while reading it, and Bran and Rickon went outside and fell asleep on either side of you,” she said, turning warm at the memory, feeling her eyes burn. She missed them so much she almost could not stand it.

“Oh, right,” Jon remembered slowly. “And your mother was furious with me because she couldn’t find them and had gotten scared.”

She shouldn’t have drawn the conversation to her family—it would be natural for him to ask her about them, and it was a painful topic.

But he didn’t say a single word on it.

**Jon**

“Here is good,” Sansa said, as he turned off the Street of Sisters. This part of the city was still alive, the streets still thick with traffic, though it was past nine. “I’m not far from here at all.”

Jon pulled up to the curb. “So…Thursday?”

He looked over at her, drowning in her hoodie, her hair bright even in the darkness.

“Yeah, Thursday,” he agreed. “Be safe.”

“Well, I’m more or less Jaime Lannister in terms of fighting skills now, thanks to you, so maybe I’ll wander down a few dark alleys,” she teased; even her teasing still sounded so shy. “Anyway, I’ll see you then.”

“See you.” He watched her get out of his car, then walk away from him, toward the Street of Steel.

When she was no longer in his line of sight, he slumped forward, leaning his forehead against the wheel, and let out a shaking breath of relief.

There could be no more fooling himself. The thing he had always known had been so plain before him tonight. As he had closed his hand around Sansa’s arm, touching her intentionally for the first time in his life, he had realized that it was no longer possible to hide from it—even if Ned Stark had specifically asked him to.

At Robb’s wedding, all those years ago, he had been Robb’s best man—much to Theon’s private pain, though Theon had of course never admitted to this—and Sansa had been Myrcella’s maid of honor. Though Myrcella had plenty of her own friends, the wedding had been organized very carefully to prevent any of Myrcella’s family—a toxic, abusive, dysfunctional dynamic that she had taken great pains to break away from—from attending. Thus, Sansa was Myrcella’s maid of honor, and her uncle Jaime (that famed action hero) and her younger brother Tommen had been the only ones of her family to attend. It was understandably a complicated time for Myrcella, and Sansa had gone over the top in trying to make the day perfect, and therefore less painful, for Myrcella.

Jon had been at the beginning of his NW career at the time, a newly-minted agent, and had flown up for the wedding but hadn’t been able to get away in time for the rehearsal dinner. It hadn’t mattered, Robb assured him, because there was nothing to rehearse: it was intentionally a casual thing, and Sansa had only organized it to make the whole thing feel more normal for Myrcella.

Still, he had guessed that Sansa would not be pleased about it, and the whole plane ride he had dreaded seeing her again. He had seen her last at Arya’s graduation, many months previously, where they had only exchanged a few terse words, and had not been in touch with her since. He did not think that additional time, as well as his lateness, would make her any warmer to him.

But he had been wrong about that.

The wedding was being held at a nearby estate, which boasted a historic rose garden situated within ancient stone walls—the ideal setting for a wedding. Jon had been informed he was to go to the estate early with Sansa to help with preparations. Myrcella and Robb were already there, getting ready in private rooms, and they would offer moral support as well as make sure that other logistics were being handled.

And so he had found himself in a tuxedo at nine thirty in the morning, rushing around with Sansa. They ended up being too busy for scalding silence, and she seemed to be floating and glowing, propelled by some magic, her lovely cheeks flushed and her eyes bright. He had helped her hang more decorations she had made in the room where the reception would be held—the decorations looked professional, of course—and she had happily chattered about all of the twists and turns leading up to the big day, as though there had never been any tension between them at all.

Her profound happiness had been a mystery to him until the ceremony, when they had stood in the garden, drunk on the almost overpowering fragrance of all the roses, and he had watched Sansa become emotional as Robb and Myrcella exchanged vows.

 _She always did love a good romance,_ he had remembered, and had hastily looked away when he saw she realized he had been staring. He had forgotten how startlingly lovely she was and felt hassled about it. He kept thinking, desperately, that he needed more time, and he didn’t know why he kept thinking such a thing.

As the ceremony ended, and the guests filed back toward the pavilion for the reception, he found himself walking with Ned. Up ahead, Sansa was with Robb and Myrcella, her hair rippling like her dress as she walked.

“Sansa’s been obsessing about this wedding for months,” Ned mused as they walked, his eyes fixed on his daughter.

“Yeah. She did a really good job of organizing everything,” Jon said, as he had been unable to bring himself to tell her this himself. “But she always has loved weddings, and…that kind of stuff,” he added, sensing the lameness of his words. He felt like he had been put under a spotlight and he didn’t know why.

“She has,” Ned agreed. “I always worry that that love will get her in trouble; that she’ll marry too soon, or marry the wrong man, just because she wants the romance, and is afraid it'll be her only chance.”

Arya had joined Sansa, Robb, and Myrcella, and Jon watched Arya sling an arm around her sister’s waist impishly. Their relationship had improved significantly now that they were no longer under one roof, Jon had noticed.

“She’s a smart girl,” said Jon at last. “I don’t think she’d do that.”

They reached the pavilion where flutes of champagne were waiting on trays dusted with rose petals, and Arya was loudly teasing Sansa for the girliness of it, but her teasing was kind, and Sansa only laughed. “At least we don’t have to worry about her and Joffrey anymore,” he added, as a waiter handed flutes of champagne to both him and Ned, though neither man wanted one. Ned was smiling at the flute of champagne, looking at a rose petal floating in it.

“No, thank god,” he said gruffly. “She deserves a better man than that. She deserves the best man. Someone worthy of her. I hope she sees that.”

And Ned had looked directly at him, and Jon had felt his face grow hot as his mouth went dry. In his peripheral vision he saw Myrcella embrace Sansa tightly, and then both girls left the pavilion—later he would learn that Myrcella had grown emotional and had needed a private moment to pull herself together. As they left, Sansa brushed past him—all pink silk and red hair and smooth, lovely skin—and his skin prickled with awareness.

He had the sense of being punished for a crime he had had no idea he had committed. He looked away from Ned, thinking of all of the times this man had been a father to him, of all of the times this man had gently corrected him when he’d done wrong. And so he had stayed away from Sansa for the rest of the wedding, very carefully providing a thin excuse to himself for each time he turned from her.

They could not dance together—though it would have been natural and had been expected—because he hated dancing.

They could not talk with each other—though they were sitting side by side throughout dinner—because they had nothing in common, and because they had always disliked each other.

Later he would agonize over the conversation and what it had meant. Had Ned been kindly, gently correcting him for a wrong he had done? Or had it been meaningless; had Ned merely been sharing his concerns about his beautiful, willful, innocent daughter with Jon? Had he misinterpreted an innocent comment because of his own secret shame?

He still didn’t know, all these years later, whether the exchange had meant anything at all, and too soon after the wedding, Ned had passed, and now he would never be able to ask.

The only benefit of being older was that he knew himself better, so he knew he was inclined to overanalyze, and often attributed far more meaning to others’ remarks than they had ever intended. It was part and parcel of being good at his job, of being so acutely attuned to others’ emotions that he sometimes did not know where theirs ended and his began. It meant that he excelled in anticipating the worst intentions of criminals, but that interpersonal relationships were sometimes hellish. He saw too much, to the point where he was not always clear on whether he had seen something or merely assumed it.

He drove back to his grim apartment. This truth, this truth he had so carefully been avoiding, was overwhelming, and so painful, because there was no point to it. Coming to terms with this truth did nothing, could lead to nothing. Its only benefit was that it was another facet of himself that he was now familiar with, just another flaw that he could at least claim awareness of.

Later, Jon lay in his bed, blasting the air conditioner. He always racked up insane bills during the summer in King’s Landing, because he couldn’t sleep unless he was cold. It wasn’t like he was spending the money on anything else, though, and he paid almost nothing in heating bills in the winter. He wondered if Sansa was the same way, wondered if she too would always be of the north.

He stared at his mobile. He knew he should have texted Robb, at the very least, about his encounters with Sansa. But he still did not know what he could possibly say.

_Hi, I’m trying to help Sansa extricate herself from a violently abusive relationship and I think it might be working._

_Hi, Sansa is obviously crippled by her own shame about ending up in an abusive relationship and you shouldn’t give up on her._

_Hi, I’ve been in love with Sansa since I was nine._

He put his mobile away.

**Sansa**

She held the photographs up to the frames.

“Ooh, what about this one? The gold will be so pretty next to her wedding dress,” the sales associate gushed, holding a gold frame up to the picture of Robb and Myrcella dancing at their wedding.

“He’s...not really a gold person,” Sansa replied, then looked back at the frame she had picked. It was slim and black and matte, and could either be hung or mounted on the wall. It was so simple that it faded from view, showcasing the photograph. It would be perfect on all of the photographs.

It would be perfect for Jon.

She couldn’t stop smiling. She had had copies of the photographs made—the secret photographs that she kept in the desk drawer—but she was giving Jon the originals. She didn’t know why it made a difference, but she could not help but feel like it did. He ought to have the originals. She knew that would mean something to him, knew that he would appreciate that even more.

The best one was of him and Arya. That, she knew, would mean the most out of all of them to him. She couldn’t wait to see his face when she gave them to him.

The frames were cheap, too. And so she handed over the last of her secret money to the sales associate, but it was with pure joy. It would take years for her to amass enough money to leave Ramsay—but she could make Jon happy _now_.

**Jon**

“Oh, great—Snow’s zoning out again.” A slender hand waved before his face. “Earth to Jon Snow.”

Jon jolted from his reverie, and back to the meeting he was currently having with Mormont, Val, Sam, and Edd.

“What, you don’t find severed limbs _thrilling?_ ” Edd asked sarcastically, holding up a photo from the Mooton case files.

“Please. He was thinking about sex,” Val snorted, and Jon felt his face grow hot, incriminating him immediately. He rarely blushed. He met Val’s navy eyes defiantly.

“They say men think about sex every four seconds, on average,” he said simply, clicking and unclicking his pen to relieve his anxiety.

“Who’s ‘they’, a deodorant commercial?” Edd parried. “Then again, that sounds about right.”

“How you can think about sex at a time like _this_ ,” Sam began in horror, gesturing to the case files spread out before them, “is utterly beyond me, Jon. You’re something else.”

“New love is a powerful force,” Val mused.

It was only made more awkward by the fact that Jon and Val’s history, however brief and unimportant to either of them, was an open secret, known to everyone in the room. Val was smirking at him all too knowingly.

“Hopefully Snow can find _new love_ for the case files,” Mormont interrupted grumpily, shifting the photographs forward. One of them was a close-up of a pair of legs, mottled with death and spattered with blood.

“Well, he does appreciate a good pair of legs,” Val conceded, earning a laugh from everyone except Jon.

After the meeting, with nothing new accomplished, Val followed him back to his office. They fell into step naturally. The emotional side of their relationship had had a hard stop and had been brief and somewhat forced but the physical side had lingered for far longer, if for no other reason than they were both too busy, too dark, too tortured by what they saw each day to pursue better choices.

“So? Who’s the girl? Out with it.”

“There’s no girl.” Jon pushed into his office, the desk piled high with papers to match his desk at his apartment, and his chest tightened. _And there won’t be a girl. At least, not that one,_ he reminded himself.

He had held off all evening from letting himself think too much about how it had felt, after an entire lifetime, to touch Sansa for the first time. In spite of the conclusion he had come to, he refused to let himself think about her. Avoiding such thoughts apparently required all of his mental energy. He was on fire, and exhausted. He should have been better at this, as he had had a near lifetime of practice, but it seemed that in facing the truth of his feelings he had relinquished the ability he had had in the past to so effectively turn from that consuming heat.

She had flinched every time he’d touched— _Stop._

He had been close enough to barely detect the scent of her perfume, a remnant scent clinging to her skin that made him want to— _Enough. Stop._

The hair at the nape of her neck, coming free from her ponytail, had grown damp with sweat before long, and the soft hair had clung to her smooth skin— _Don’t._

Every now and then he’d heard her gasp or let out a breath, and the sound had been so— _No more._

The thoughts were so intrusive, so unbearable. He could not escape his own mind, and frustration was building, brick by brick.

Nothing could come of this.

Just like when they had been teens, and he had watched her slip past in her pink leotards, in her bathing suits, in her sundresses, so carelessly and so heartbreakingly lovely, he would not allow his eyes or his mind to wander, to linger, on possibilities. He had not been entitled to a chance with her then, and why was he letting himself think that anything had changed? He still had no right to think about her, and in fact he now had even less. She was a married woman; she was a battered woman. He could not be with her; he could not save her. They might have this brief time together, but it was transient. It would end.  

 _And when that happens_ — _because that is what will happen—will you be okay with it?_ Daenerys, wiser than he often credited her as being, had asked him, so sadly.

“Don’t blame me if I don’t believe you, Snow. But I’m damn good at my job. I can always spot a liar.” Val was leaning against the edge of his desk. Not even months ago they had fucked on this very desk, but the thought was not intrusive. It was not anything at all. It never had been.

“What would you possibly stand to gain from extracting a confession from me?” he pointed out as he turned his laptop back on and typed in his password. “You wouldn’t know her. We’re not together anymore. It has no impact on your life.”

“You forget that I love being right.” She paused, and hesitated. “That, and it really pisses me off that you’re sitting there zoning out while we’re focused on this big case. It’s not like you at all to be so disrespectful to our work or so unfocused on our work, so I’ll give you one pass, but it is really insulting.”

Jon finally looked back at her. She had shamed him. She didn’t look happy or triumphant about it, at least.

“I’m sorry.”

“Mormont mentioned something about a girl at the Tarly building,” Val remarked now, picking up one of his pens and fidgeting with it mindlessly. Jon looked away.

“Are you going to give me another lecture?” he snapped, opening his notes on the Mooton case.

“No. Waste of my time, and yours, given that this is all shit you _really_ should know by now.” She clicked and unclicked the pen, several times, as he had earlier. “I just think it’s amazing that you actually believe you’re fooling anyone, that you actually think you’re managing this situation.” She set down the pen. “White Knight wasn’t a compliment, when Mormont used to call you that. Just so you know.”

“I just think it’s amazing that you actually believe this is _remotely_ your business.”

“Oh, go cry into your diary about it, emo boy.” She slid off the desk. “But in the meantime, please get your shit together. Stop white-knighting. Start helping the people you _can_ help.” She waved the photos from the Mooton case demonstratively, and left.

Jon tried to refocus on the Mooton case, and was nearly successful when Pypar and Grenn burst into his office, looking gleeful.

“My dear Snow White,” Pypar began with a flourish, laying a series of printed images on his desk, “please describe the man you see before you.”

Pypar was looking smug; Grenn was beaming, his face blotchy with excitement. Jon studied the pictures. They were blurred snapshots from security footage, darkened and spotty.

“Where are these from?”

“The security camera outside of a Hot Pie’s…across the street from the Tarly building,” Pypar replied with obvious relish.

All of the security cameras in the Tarly building had been disabled on the day of the bomb scare, which had taken the task from the mindless tracing of suspicious passerby to a witchhunt for a man who had disappeared into thin air and only been seen by Sansa. Combing through the footage from surrounding security cameras, of course, was hunting for a needle in an endless supply of needles.

Jon studied the successive blurred shots. A heavyset man, perhaps in his forties, wearing a hooded sweatshirt and carrying a duffel bag, went into the Hot Pie’s, stopped at the ATM, then left—apparently crossing the street toward the Tarly building.

“I am impressed that you found a forty-something overweight man carrying a bag on security footage,” Jon said, trying not to laugh at his colleagues. “What a rare bird.”

Pypar rolled his eyes, but he was still grinning.

“That’s not the end of it, Snow White,” he said patiently, handing Jon another printout.

It was a mugshot of a man with a blotchy, fat face and patchy blond-grey hair, his eyes rimmed with red and the whites yellowed enough to suggest a serious drinking problem; his nose was red and shiny with broken capillaries.

“Dontos Hollard,” Jon read off.

“Arrested for public drunkenness,” Pypar informed him, “three times.”

“Who is he?”

“An employee of Littlefinger Entertainment and Catering,” Grenn answered with theatric care. Jon stared at him, nonplussed, and Grenn flushed. “Uh, that’s who usually does the parties for companies owned by Tarly,” he explained.

“And he had not one, not two, but _three_ awkward run-ins with Randyll Tarly at a Tarly polo match,” Pypar continued, “wherein he was drunk on the job and Tarly called him out on it, publicly.”

“And so he decided to bomb the building? That seems like an overreaction,” Jon remarked, studying the man’s face. He did not look like a psychopath. He looked like a pathetic, lonely alcoholic.

“In your mind, in what situation would bombing an entire building _not_ be an overreaction?” Pypar snarked. Jon ignored him.

“So where is he?”

Pypar and Grenn glanced between each other.

“Working on it,” Grenn finally said, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly. “The thing is—“

“—No one can find him. Not even Sam. We’ve traced all of his bank records—though to be honest he is one broke-ass man so that was a total waste of our time—and we thought we’d found some luck when we found his car—“

“—But it’s probably broken-down and abandoned on a side street,” Jon guessed immediately, and they nodded. “He’s clearly intelligent, since he knew which cameras to disable and how to disable them, and his bomb design was sophisticated, _and_ he is smart enough to keep a low profile, but he just can’t manage to hold together a functional life.”

“Exactly. Which leads me to think that he probably won’t make another attempt any time soon,” Pypar agreed. “He knows he’s being watched, and since he’s not turned up to work since well before the bombing attempt, we have to assume that the initial stimulus for the attempt—job rage—has been removed.” Pypar paused. “But your witness’ description of him was _perfect._ Look, in the mugshot you can even see that he’s five-foot-ten, and we took her height and she’s five-foot-seven. She said he was two to three inches taller than her.”

“And her description of his clothes tracks, too,” Grenn added. “He wears the clothing she described all the time, from what we can see of pictures of him going to work, and from other people we’ve interviewed.”

Jon’s lips twitched as he looked down at the mugshot. He would have loved to tell Sansa this very moment that she had not only averted a major catastrophe—she had also been instrumental in catching the criminal, too. Of course, he was restricted from telling her any details.

 _When the news report comes out, she’ll know then,_ he consoled himself. But he still was filled with the urge to email her immediately.

**Sansa**

Sansa knocked on Jon’s door, heart pounding and hands clammy, at seven thirty on the dot.

“I brought sandwiches this time,” she said by way of greeting when he opened the door. His hair was still wet from a shower and he was wearing a black tee with NW printed on it. She bit her lip to stop herself from bursting with the gift she had for him. “I hope you like turkey.”

“What if I don’t?” She was starting to learn better when he was teasing and she laughed as he stowed them in the refrigerator. She set her purse aside, and followed him down to the basement.

“Then make your own sandwich,” she retorted. She caught a glimpse of his sly grin, and she felt like she had won something. “So, what are we studying today?”

“Headlocks,” he said over his shoulder, and her belly tightened.

More touching.

Dammit.

“I have a feeling I am about to seriously embarrass myself,” she replied as they hurried down the steps.

“Probably.”

“No, see, that was your cue to say something encouraging,” she countered, face flushing. She had forgotten what it felt like to tease people.

“But it’s wrong to lie,” Jon shot back. She tried not to smile, to laugh, but she couldn’t help it.

In the tiny basement gym, they faced each other, and she suppressed that strange quiver, that fluttering behind her ribs, the way her lips tried to curve into a grin just because their eyes were meeting.

“Headlocks,” she said, biting her lip.

“Headlocks. Probably more common than a wrist-grab, because they’re harder to break out of,” Jon said. He suddenly looked extremely uncomfortable. “Um. If you just turn around, I’ll show—”

“—Right.” She swallowed and turned away from him.

“When you’re ready, I’m going to put my arm around your neck.” She heard him pad closer to her, until he was standing behind her. Every hair on her body was standing at attention, and even breathing felt like a task that was beyond her.

“I’m ready.”

His smooth arm, the hair on it so soft, was sliding against her neck, and then his chest was pressed against her back. “A-are they always so gentle when they put you in a headlock?” she joked, her voice tight. She didn’t know what to do with her hands. She felt Jon laugh more than she heard it: a rush of breath against the back of her neck, and his chest shaking slightly.

“So what will happen is that you’ll be forced to bend more, and then I’ll be on your side,” he was saying gently, slowly coaxing their bodies so that she was bent forward and he was to her left, his right hip against her left hip, his chest only partially pressed against her now. “So you turn your head towards me, so that your breathing isn’t constricted.”

She did as told, and felt his hair brush her cheek. “You can’t overpower me here because gravity and physics are working against you. Most people try to pull at their attacker’s arm, but that’s completely pointless. But notice that your hands are free. So,” he paused, drew in a deep breath, “you can either hit me in the groin, or else stun me in the stomach with your elbow.”

“I’m guessing you want me to stun you in the stomach.”

“That would be appreciated, yes.”

She lightly moved her elbow backward, hitting his abdomen, and he released her immediately. He stepped backward, and she turned to face him. Both of them were flushed. _From bending forward like that,_ she told herself. “So, that’s one way. If you hit hard enough, you’ll stun him enough to let go. Here’s another way.”

And then he was holding her again, his hard chest against her back, his smooth skin sliding against hers. The more they practiced, the more sweaty she became, until she was keenly aware—and fully embarrassed—of how damp her skin was every time his forearm slid against her neck. At some point he’d notice; at some point he would point out that she could shed her sweatshirt.

But he never did.

After an hour, she was beginning to shake, her muscles weak, so they decided to call it a night. And now her belly was beginning to tighten with anticipation, as they approached the moment where she would give Jon her gift. They climbed the stairs back to his apartment and unwrapped the sandwiches she’d brought, and Jon talked more about headlocks as they ate but she didn’t process a single word.

And then they had finished the sandwiches, and it was time.

“So, I got you something for this apartment,” she began, trying to keep the shaking from her voice. “Or for your office. Or just to have. I mean, I don’t know. It doesn’t matter what you do with them. I’ve been keeping them in my desk drawer in my office, just to look at sometimes when I feel like I need to, but you should have them. I mean, I made copies, but these are the ones I’ve been keeping in my desk drawer. Um, anyway.” She turned away from him and rummaged through her purse for the carefully-wrapped set of pictures, and pulled them out, her face hot and her fingers clumsy. She turned back round to Jon, who was regarding her almost warily. “Here.”

She held out the paper bundle and Jon took it gingerly, and set it down on the little table between them to unwrap it. She watched his face carefully as he pulled away the paper, revealing the photograph of Robb, Dad, and Mom at Robb’s wedding, and he brightened visibly.

“He was so happy,” Jon finally said quietly, studying the picture.

“It was a really good wedding,” Sansa agreed, wrapping her arms around herself, heart pounding. Just to keep herself from becoming overwhelmed with anxiety, she went round the table to stand beside him and look at the pictures with him, though she had seen them a thousand times.

He set aside that photo to look at the one of Robb and Myrcella dancing together, and she heard him laugh slightly. “They’re like the dream couple,” she babbled. “She’s golden-haired and willowy and beautiful and he’s tall and broad and handsome. Like, they ought to dress up and go to conventions as Prince Charming and Cinderella, or something.”

Jon was smiling a small, secret smile as he set aside that picture and examined the one of Bran and Rickon on the beach.

“Poor Bran,” he mused. “But once upon a time he was as wild as Rickon.”

“Yeah, once upon a time that would’ve been you reading, like, _The Odyssey_ , and Bran about to throw sand at you,” Sansa agreed, pain squeezing her chest. She missed them so, so much.  

And then he got to the photograph of him with Arya, and his smile fell away.

“I remember that day, when she came to visit,” he said quietly, touching the frame. And he went quiet for a very long time as they stared at it together. It was so painful to look at Arya’s face. She missed her so much she thought she might die. She waited for him to, at last, ask about Arya, to at last tell her she ought to call Arya. “No pictures of you, though,” he said at last. He cleared his throat and, abruptly, took her plate from the little table and went to the sink. She wondered if she had offended him.

“Well, I don’t really need a picture of myself,” she pointed out, anxious as she watched his back tense. “I can’t believe it, but somehow I ended up in this new house without any other pictures of them.”

At last he turned around, and his eyes were bright. Her stomach dropped as he walked to her, and his brows knit together as he stared at her.

“Sansa,” he began in a low voice, “These are—” he abruptly stopped talking and turned away. She stepped forward, mindlessly, and touched his back, and he turned round at her touch. They were too close; she could see the freckles in his grey eyes, see his scars in perfect clarity; so close she could feel her lips thrumming with the urge to press them to his. _A ridiculous urge._ Why did she keep thinking about it? “Thank you,” he finally said.

She felt like crying, but not from sadness. She watched him turn away, biting his lip, heard him draw in a sharp breath, watched him rake a hand through his hair.

“So,” he said, too loud, after clearing his throat, “should I hang them?”

“You can hang them or set them on a desk,” she said, going to the frames and turning over the picture of Robb and Myrcella. “Look, they have both.”

“It’s too bad I have such nice, perfect walls; otherwise I’d hang them,” Jon said dryly, nodding toward the wall over his desk, which had a long, jagged crack in the paint.

“Well, let’s see how they’d look there.” She took another photo, and went to the desk, holding both the pictures against the wall. “How does that look?”

She looked back at him, but he had been looking at her; he hastily looked at the pictures.

“You should decide where they go,” he said. “But I think I want the one of me and Arya for my desk at work.”

“It would be thematically appropriate,” Sansa agreed with a smile, heart twingeing again as she thought of Arya. “Plus you’ve always been so close to her.”

“Yeah. Let me get a hammer and studfinder,” Jon said suddenly. He disappeared into the kitchen and came back with a toolbox that was slightly dusty. “Actually, Arya gave me this, when I first moved in,” he confessed, setting it down on the desk and opening it up between them. Sansa looked away.

“I-I really miss her,” she admitted, looking at the wall. “Incredibly. Who would’ve thought?”

She heard him pause, briefly, then resume rummaging through the toolbox.

“I’m not surprised.” He was holding the stud finder. “Let’s see if I can remember how to use this.”

She heard him fiddling with it, but she still could only stare at the wall.

“When we fought,” she began, choosing each word with care, “it was about Ramsay. She said it was weird that none of the family had met him yet, and—and she told me I was just being silly and naïve and rushing into a romance just because I was afraid of not getting married like all my friends were doing at the time.”

“Were you?”

The question surprised her.

“I-I didn’t think so, at the time. Now I think she was right. But I was so embarrassed—“ She couldn’t continue. “Everyone always thought I was the stupid one.”

“I don’t think anyone could possibly think that you’re stupid, Sansa. You were valedictorian of your class.”

“It felt like they thought that.”

It was her most raw, most private pain. She bit her lip to stifle the urge to cry, then continued once it had passed. “I know Arya thinks that.”

“Arya has never thought that. She might have said it, but she never meant it.”

“Why would she say it, then?”

“Because she hasn’t gotten over always feeling like a failure next to you. She never got good grades, she wasn’t valedictorian, she was always in trouble with your parents.” She heard Jon scoff softly. “I can’t tell you anything about the Tarly bomber case, legally, but—but you literally saved everyone’s lives, and your witness account was—“ he halted, weighing his words, “— _valuable._ I actually had two other agents talk to me about how unexpectedly good your account was, just today.”

“Why did you go along with her, though?”

“Because I was angry, all the time, at everything, and because I felt like you didn’t like me, and because I felt like everyone was laughing at me all the time.”

“But no one was—“

“—No, but that’s how it felt,” Jon admitted. “I didn’t know how to fit in, and you did, and Arya and I both were so jealous of you and Robb for that. You both always seemed to have it so easy. People always just liked you, right away. It wasn’t right, and I’m sorry for it.”

Sansa thought of the sweet, angry boy who disappeared off to Middle Earth more often that not, who played hockey because it was a chance to express the anger that he had no words for, who dealt with the pain of rejection by rejecting first.

“Teenagers are so stupid,” she finally said, and heard Jon scoff.

“Yeah.”

In silence Jon used the stud finder and they hung two of the pictures—of Robb, Mom, and Dad, and from Robb’s wedding—over his desk.

“Already looks better,” she marveled, then realized it sounded like she was congratulating herself, but Jon spoke before she could apologize, or correct herself.

“Yeah. A lot better.”

It was late, now. Much later than she had intended. It was a risk. There would be consequences.

She thought of how he had looked when he’d thanked her. She thought of him apologizing. She looked at the picture of him and Arya.

_Fuck the consequences._

“I should go,” she said. “It’s so late. Ramsay will be wondering. Oh, and I finished _The Fellowship._ ” She rifled through her purse and handed the copy, though it pained her to give it up.

“Do you want the next one?” Jon took the copy from her and their fingertips brushed, jolting them. She avoided his eyes.

“Y-yeah, I’d love it,” she said. He disappeared into his bedroom and came out with the next book, also heavily careworn, and she look it with clammy hands.

Strained silence tautened between them; she could not say why it was suddenly so awkward when it had been so warm between them moments before. She followed him out to his car, still clutching the book to her chest, and in the quiet, wet night they drove toward the Street of Sisters.

“You can just drop me off at the same place,” she said, at last. “A walk will be good, especially after all that hard work.” The words fell flat even to her own ears, and Jon did not say anything, but she saw his grip on the steering wheel tighten.

Her dread was growing, hardening, turning to lead in the pit of her stomach. She didn’t want to go home. She didn’t want to go back to her life with Ramsay. She didn’t want to return to reality.

They pulled up to the same curb, and Jon put the car in park. For a moment, they sat there. She looked at Jon, and he was looking down at his hands, picking at a nail, but his jaw was clenched; she could tell immediately. She watched him close his eyes, and draw in a breath. After he exhaled, he finally spoke.

“I can’t tell you how much the pictures mean,” he said, and it felt like there was an ever-swelling balloon inside of her, making it impossible to breathe.

“I’m glad you like them,” she said. “You’ve done so much for me, and I—”

He was twisted to look at her, and she forced herself through her fear: she met his eyes. _Jon is good, Jon is kind._ She had nothing to fear from him. She never had. “I wish we had been kinder to each other. We’re both kind people; and I think we’re both often misunderstood people, too,” she reasoned, knowing she was just pointlessly rambling, knowing that she was avoiding something yet also at the same time craning her neck to see it. “It’s just…it’s just that it’s so weird, that things are now so different between us. I keep finding myself wondering why we’re able to be kind to each other now. Maybe because we’re not teenagers, I guess. But, whatever it is, it’s nice.”

She watched him swallow. His eyes were bright, reflecting the light from the city and traffic around them. The sounds of the city felt so very far away, even though they were in the thick of it.

“It’s so ridiculous that you’re _grateful_ that I’m being kind,” he scoffed. “Why would that not be what you expect, what you demand?” he asked her sadly, and his words were squeezing her chest until she could not breathe for the searing pain ripping through her.

She looked down at the emergency brake dividing their seats, and froze when she felt his soft touch on the back of her head, guiding her to look back up, slightly, and then his lips brushed against her forehead in the most gentle of kisses.

The last time she had been kissed had been at her wedding. But it had felt nothing like this. She had _never_ been touched like this.

The car was suddenly airless. After all of the years, all of the pain, all of the ways they had avoided and hurt each other, it was this that had finally driven him to voluntarily touch her, not because he was supposed to, or because he needed to, but because he wanted to; because he was telling her something that could not be said with words.

Perhaps he had rolled his eyes at her; perhaps he had teased her now and then with Arya; but she had known this man, gentle and loving and generous, was who he had always been. She thought of the boy curled up with _Lord of the Rings,_ desperately retreating to Middle Earth the same way she retreated into fairy tales; she thought of the boy who had fallen asleep with Bran and Rickon on either side of him, so certain that he would protect them; she thought of the man who had remembered her favorite book, who had listened to her and had not laughed at her when she had chattered excitedly about why she loved that book.

She felt his lips linger against her skin briefly. They were leaning over the precipice of something. He pulled away and she felt him draw in a nervous, shaking breath as he let go of her, pulling his hand away.

They each shifted back into their seats, each struggling for breath. Every part of her was alive; every part of her was warm. She abruptly realized she was smiling. She hadn’t even noticed.

“You are kind,” he said without looking at her. “You’re the kindest out of any of us. I’m sorry we weren’t kinder in return.”

“It’s okay. It’s in the past,” she said immediately. She heard him scoff again, and she watched as he rubbed at his face. “I should’ve just gotten over it, but I guess I’m just so—“

“—No, you don’t have to get over it. You don’t _have_ to forgive anyone if they’ve treated you badly,” he said suddenly, fiercely, looking at her again. “There’s nothing wrong with you for being hurt when someone has treated you badly. It doesn’t make you too sensitive, or stupid, or whatever it is you’re thinking it makes you, whatever you’ve been told it makes you.”

A truck behind them beeped loudly, startling them both.

“Illegally parked,” Sansa noted, looking down again. “You’re going to get yelled at.” She heard Jon swear softly.

“I’m not even carrying my badge,” he realized, patting his pockets. “If I had my badge I could just flash it at them.”

“You would actually do that?”

“…Well, no. Probably not,” he admitted.

The truck driver leaned on the horn, making them both jump again.

“I should go.”

“Right.”

“If you’re free this weekend—“ she began, but was drowned out by the horn once more. “Um, I’ll email you,” she said hastily, and she looked at Jon but he was looking down.

“Yeah."

She got out of the car quickly, waving apologetically at the truck driver, then stepped backward, dazed, as she watched Jon’s car pull away.

She was in her own head for the entire walk back home; she found herself surprised to be alighting her own front steps. She hid the book in her purse, and unlocked the door. Ramsay was on his laptop in the living room, working, and did not acknowledge her when she entered, even after she called his name. This wasn’t uncommon when he was working, and she did not dare call his name a second time. It seemed that he was not questioning her late return, and she did not want to draw any attention to it, so she wordlessly climbed up the stairs and took a shower.

Long after he had finally gone to bed, she slipped out of their bed and, in the darkness, hastened to the second floor living room to read. She curled up beneath one of the windows, and with a thrill, opened the front cover.

Inside the first page, on the top corner, teenaged Jon’s handwriting greeted her. _Jon Snow,_ he had written in his distinctive handwriting, followed by his address. It was not as certain or defined as his handwriting now, but it was recognizably his.

She thought of his lips on her forehead and held the book to her chest, allowing herself to reel with pleasure at how it had felt to be so clearly loved.

And, awash in that love, this house felt more like a prison than ever.

The contrast had never been so obvious, so completely unavoidable, as it suddenly was. Her life was intolerable, unbearable. Anger erupted, coming as hot and sudden as it had in the movie theatre. She was left breathless.

She had to get out.

She sat there beneath the window, the book in her hands, but she did not read. She made plans. And, against her intentions, against her better judgment, she fell asleep beneath the window, with Jon's book held against her chest. 


	5. Chapter Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I changed this to 6 chapters because this last chapter just kept growing. So. Cool. 
> 
> Thanks to everyone for the wonderful comments and kudos.

" _If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more." - Jane Austen_

 _"_ _Fair speech may hide a foul heart." - J. R. R. Tolkien_

**Sansa**

Sansa awoke, disoriented and in pain, lying on the floor with her legs tangled in her coral-colored throw blanket and a book digging painfully into her neck. She shifted and wondered what had awoken her.

“You’re going to be late for work.”

Ramsay had walked into the living room as he buttoned up a cerulean oxford shirt, his hair still wet from the shower. “It’s after eight.”

“Oh, no,” Sansa groaned, avoiding his eyes as she sat up. It would not do to hide the book now, of course—that would only draw suspicion—so instead she let it lay on the floor beside her as she rubbed at her eyes. “You’re running late, too,” she realized, dropping her hands. Ramsay was tucking his shirt into his jeans.

Standing in a beam of morning light, he gave her his most brilliant smile, all teeth and bright eyes made all the brighter by the blue shirt.

“I have a doctor’s appointment this morning,” he said with the same delight as a woman confessing she was newly pregnant.

“Are you …unwell?” Sansa asked in surprise. She couldn’t even remember the last time either of them had been to see a doctor—Ramsay, because those fixings of normal life seemed to evade him; Sansa, because she could not risk having to shed clothing in front of anyone. Another flare of anger rippled through her as she thought of this. She hadn’t had any routine check-ups because of Ramsay. It was such a seemingly minor, unimportant thing, and yet it was just another way her life had become so constrained, so stunted, because of his violence. 

“I’m about to be _very_ well,” he said, in a cheerful, singsong voice, as he turned away from her, and Sansa felt sick. That voice never meant anything good for her. “Oh, and I’m going to a meetup for tech entrepreneurs so I won’t be home until seven thirty or so,” he called from the hall. “Perhaps you can fit in another spin class!”

“Y-yeah, definitely,” she choked.

She heard him thunder down the steps and into the kitchen, and she hurried to their bedroom to get ready as quickly as she could. She only had time to stow _The Two Towers_ in her makeup drawer, where Ramsay would never bother to look—and she could not help but take another quick, joyful look at where Jon had printed his name so many years ago, and run her fingers over the page—and then brush her teeth and put her hair, which was unusually wild from sleeping on the floor, in a bun. As she did every day, she bypassed all of the lovely sundresses and sleeveless blouses that she had in her closet for yet another long-sleeved blouse, telling herself that she would not have to do this for much longer, no matter what.

She just barely made it through the front doors of Tarly Publishing at nine, out of breath and sweating. Margaery was sauntering by with an iced latte.

“Happy Friday,” she said to Sansa with a wink, and Sansa shocked herself—and clearly Margaery—by winking back.

In spite of her unease about Ramsay, her plan filled her with such a rush of joy. The world seemed to glitter and shine, and her office, her beloved office, looked even lovelier when she entered it.

Her first task was to email her boss, Willas—Margaery’s older brother—and ask for a meeting. Her next task was a little less direct, but she had some ideas. 

She needed a lawyer to help her get away from Ramsay. Though she could not access her money safely just yet, she needed to get a better idea of what it would cost to obtain a lawyer, and what she might need to do in preparation. With a last glance at her glass door to ensure no one was standing directly outside, she went to a search engine, her fingers hovering over the keys.

She happened to know of two lawyers, though she had never directly met either of them—and one of them happened to specialize in domestic abuse. Contacting either of them would be complicated, and could lead to a bit of a mess...but she had to start somewhere, and they might be more likely to offer free counsel than other lawyers, since she had a personal connection to them.

Her first option was Tyrion Lannister, Myrcella’s uncle. A quick internet search told her that he specialized in intellectual property law, but she thought it likely that he would know enough to at least provide basic guidance.

However, he was loosely connected to her family in too many ways, and bad ways at that. She had only heard of him being extremely kind to Myrcella, but she also knew, via Joffrey, that he had an explosively bad relationship with multiple members of his family, indicating the same Lannister volatility that haunted Cersei and Joffrey. He was a dangerous option, and he knew too many people that she knew.

Her second option was Daenerys Targaryen, who was technically Jon’s aunt, though Sansa thought she was probably only in her late thirties or early forties. She specialized in domestic abuse, and an internet search yielded seemingly endless articles on her work.

She was shockingly beautiful, with thick, long platinum blonde hair, and a pouty mouth, and a fierce, direct gaze. Sansa had never met her, but she had heard so much about her over the years that she felt she had. Arya had once described her as “beautiful, but terrifying” and “brilliant, but probably a little disturbed.”

She was known for taking on cases pro bono. If Sansa could catch her attention, it might be a workaround, temporarily, for not having any money safeguarded from Ramsay.

However, Daenerys Targaryen was _very_ close to Jon, and possibly, to Arya. She might not be discrete—and Sansa knew that she was not ready to talk to anyone that knew her personally about this. For now, at least, she wanted to keep this to herself.

She opened her email, and at first she put in Tyrion’s address, but then, suddenly, changed it to Daenerys’ address, on a whim, on a sudden gut feeling.

It was a risk.

But she couldn’t steep herself further within the Lannister family, and she couldn’t wait. She decided that Daenerys Targaryen was worth the risk.

_To: Daenerys Targaryen_

_9:27am_

_Subject: Legal Advice_

_Dear Ms. Targaryen,_

_My name is Sansa Bolton, though my maiden name is Stark. I know you through Jon Snow, your nephew, who grew up with my family. I remembered being told about you and your work over the years, and I decided to contact you._

_I am currently in a violent marriage,_

She paused to draw in a shaking breath as she stared at the blinking cursor.

The office was so silent that she heard a ringing in her ears. That same anger was bubbling again, and yet, was also slowly being cooled by rains of grief. Her eyes stung, but she would not stop to cry. She resumed typing, shoulders rising and falling as she struggled to breathe normally, trying to breathe through her emotions.

_I am currently in a violent marriage, and am looking for a safe, legal way to separate from my husband. He is currently controlling my finances, and though I have made some plans to create a secret account, I am aware that legal fees are considerable and that it will take a long time to build up the kind of funding that would be necessary to pay a lawyer._

_I am sure that you are very busy, but if you would be willing to either meet or have a phone call to provide me with some guidance on my options, based on your experience with these cases, it would be much appreciated. Of course I would pay you for your time as soon as possible._

_I would also like to add that I have not informed any of my family or friends of this situation and I am planning on keeping this a private matter until I am further along in the process, and appreciate your discretion._

_Best,_

_Sansa Stark_

There was a knock on her door and Sansa jolted in her seat and, in a moment of panic, hit ‘send’ before she had meant to.

Whether she was ready or not, things were in motion now.

“Come in,” she said in a raw voice, wiping for any tears beneath her eyes and pasting a smile on her face.

Willas Tyrell, though he was not even forty, walked with a cane, and though he was not quite as infamously handsome as Loras, he had inherited the features that made Margaery and Loras so remarkably beautiful, and had soft brown eyes and delicate features and soft, slightly mussed brown hair that was prematurely streaked with grey. She had always liked her boss—he was soft-spoken, highly knowledgeable, and of course, well read, and generous with his time and praise. He was standing in her doorway now, poking his head in, and he knocked on the doorframe again with his cane—an ornate object with a mother-of-pearl handle that Margaery had given him.

“Ah, _The Lady of Shallot,_ ” he joked, his gaze alighting on the print of Waterhouse’s _The Lady of Shalott._ “You know, I’ve always thought you look like her. I’ve also always thought it was funny how close—and easily confused—Shallot and Shalott are.”

Sansa flushed. Her inner adolescent girl, perpetually swooning over Arthurian legend, was delighted, but her adult self was slightly uncomfortable. Willas seemed to sense her discomfort because he laughed slightly and looked away. “Well, anyway. I got your email—why not just meet now?”

“O-oh, of course. Here, have a seat,” Sansa said, her heart pounding. She had thought she would have more time to prepare, as Willas was notoriously inconsistent in replying to emails in a timely manner.

“Let’s go down to the lobby for a coffee,” he suggested, gesturing out the door with his cane. “I wouldn’t mind a walk.”

Sansa picked up her purse and followed Willas out of Tarly Publishing, keenly sensing how she needed to slow her steps to match his uneven, labored gait. They made it to the elevators, her clutching the strap of her purse and her heart pounding, and Willas radiating a pleasant, benign energy.

In the main lobby of the building, on the other side from the elevators, there was a tiny cafe, with a few tables scattered around it and potted plants placed at artful intervals throughout the tables, giving it an _al fresco_ feel. “You go ahead; I always have to debate on whether I want a peach scone or not,” Willas told her, and Sansa went up to the cash wrap and ordered a latte.

“Four dragons,” said the cashier listlessly. Sansa handed over her debit card mechanically, lost in her anxiety about how to approach this conversation, and jolted at the low, flat pitch that came from the cash register. _Declined._ “Do you have another card, ma’am?”

Sansa thought of how musical Ramsay’s voice had been, how bright his eyes had been, earlier, and felt the blood drain from her head. She had to quickly grip the counter as she swayed slightly in horror.

_He knows._

“Y-you know, I think I ought to just call my bank,” Sansa stammered, her face growing hot as she felt Willas approaching. “Must be some sort of card security thing. Never mind about the latte.”

There were few things more humiliating than publicly having a card declined, and Sansa could not bear to have her boss witness this—particularly in light of what she was about to talk to him about. She backed away from the cash wrap with haste, her stomach writhing, and watched Willas order. He came over to her, struggling with his plated scone and cane, and she hastily took the plate from him and set it on the nearest table. “I’ll grab some napkins,” she told him, if only to give herself a moment to compose herself.

They sat down together amid the bustle of the lobby, their table overshadowed by a large, potted Ficus tree that was strung with twinkle lights.

“So, my Lady of Shallot,” he joked again lightly, cutting into his scone, “what did you wish to speak of?”

She could not falter. She could not waver. She could not cower. She had to impress him, had to compel him. She literally could not afford to mess this up, especially now that Ramsay had apparently deactivated her debit card. She drew in a steeling breath, and looked Willas directly in the eye.

“I’ve worked for you for a long time, and have consistently done an excellent job.” Her voice wavered, slightly, on _excellent._ She fought the urge to look away from his eyes. “I know we’re not at performance review time, but I—well, I wanted to ask for a raise.”

Willas’ lips twitched, and he looked down, resuming cutting his scone.

“It isn’t performance review time, you’re right,” he conceded. “And I only do raises during performance reviews.”

“I recognize that,” Sansa said, “but I wanted to see if you might make an exception for an exceptional employee.”

“You _do_ have a way with words. Good hiring,” Willas said, pointing at her with his fork. “Unfortunately, it isn’t my decision to only give out raises during performance reviews, my Lady of Shallot.”

The joke was beginning to grate, just a _little_ bit. Sansa fixed a smile and folded her hands on the table to hide how they shook finely with her panic.

Ramsay had turned off her debit card—what else might he do? What if he had found out about her secret email—and therefore found her emails to Jon, to Daenerys?

Her plan was already toppling over and she hadn’t even really begun yet.

“But—”

“Human Resources, that _wonderful_ department run by the truly matchless Varys, is in charge of such things,” he continued wryly. She had always noticed that he seemed to resent Varys, and Human Resources as a whole. “You know, in all of the years you have worked for me, you have never once _asked_ for a raise, and each time I have awarded you one, you have been shocked. This change is unexpected.”

“I’ve been reading some self-help books,” she joked lightly, earning a laugh from Willas.

“I’m truly sorry, but I can’t offer you a raise at this moment. But in December, we can revisit the idea,” he said gently. Sansa bit down on her lip to try and stop tears from coming.

December.

She could not wait until December to _begin_ saving for a lawyer.

She could not spend another near six months controlled by Ramsay, with no plan in place, with no progress towards escape.

_December._

Willas finished his scone, and only seemed then to realize that Sansa had not gotten anything. “Not hungry?” he asked as they walked back to the elevators.

“I’m on a diet,” she replied thinly. She heard him sigh as the elevator doors opened.

“You girls are always on this or that diet. Margaery is always starting some new diet with the gusto of a zealot,” he mused. “Why not just enjoy being lovely; why not just enjoy life?”

“We wouldn’t _be_ lovely if we just enjoyed life,” Sansa replied lightly as they zoomed up to the thirteenth floor. Willas laughed, but it was a sad sound.

They parted ways, Willas taking his uneven steps to his corner office, Sansa taking hurried steps back to hers. Once she was in the privacy of her office, she could not help but squeeze a few tears of frustration and horror out. She dropped into her chair, her mind swimming with all of the ways her choices, her options, were being hacked away—until her computer let out a soft _ping._

It was a new email—to her secret account.

_From: Daenerys Targaryen_

_10:22am_

_Subject: Re: Legal Advice_

_Would be delighted to meet. Let’s do lunch next week at the Hizdahr—been craving their asparagus soup. When free?_

_Daenerys Targaryen, LL.M, MBA_

**Jon**

All day he had been in that strange, quivering, fragile state that only a profound lack of sleep could bring, but he had been so busy that he hadn’t had time to think on it, thankfully. They were at last making some progress on the Mooton case, and it looked like in a few days he would need to fly back up to Maidenpool—whether he wanted to or not.

Pypar and Grenn had insisted they all go out for beers after work, and had been insisting _all week_ by sending unbelievably obnoxious emails that were so filled with GIFs that they never completely loaded. Jon himself had no desire to go, but when he had begged off, he had been so resoundingly made fun of that he had no choice but to promise to at least join them for one round.

Besides, all he was going to do was try and fail to sleep, and try and fail to not think about Sansa, and what it had felt like to kiss Sansa, and what it felt like to know that that was the most contact they would ever have. It would probably be best to be around others, even though he had no desire to make conversation.

After five, they all piled into a few cars and drove out of the headquarters and back into the central district of King’s Landing. The early evening was golden, and the streets were packed with revelers, and Jon thought of Sansa, who should have been among them, happily walking from her job to drinks with friends in a sleeveless dress. Instead she would likely either be trapped at home, or else forced to go out to dinner with Ramsay, forced to pretend to be happy. It made him sick to think of, and he told himself to stop thinking of it, but it was getting more and more difficult each time he told himself not to think of her.

Now he knew what it felt like to kiss her.

He was not sure he could simply go back to his life as it had been before, now that he knew. He could not un-know it, he could not undo what he had so foolishly, so impulsively, so willfully done. It had been against Ned Stark’s express wishes—or had it? He still was not sure—and it had been _wrong_ as she was a married woman, and it had been useless, as nothing could come of it.

“Where are we going?” he asked, trying to refocus on the present moment. He was squashed in the back seat of Sam’s electric car with Val, and Edd was in the passenger seat, and Edd and Sam were fighting over whose terrible music they ought to play.

“Lommy’s. Pay attention,” Val said, rolling her eyes. “Stop thinking about sex,” she added in a lower, sly voice, so that Edd and Sam could not hear.

“I wasn’t,” he said, “not this time.”

“No? Well, _I_ was.” Val turned and looked out the window, and he could just barely see the edge of her smirk. She glanced back at him. “It’s been a while, you know.”

“Months,” Jon agreed, looking ahead.

They sat in silence as Edd won the battle and began blasting a singer-songwriter’s weepy croon.

“This is not the sort of music you play before you go to Lommy’s,” Sam was saying loudly, and he reached over and unplugged Edd’s phone from the speakers. “Techno, or nothing!”

Val was laughing, and Jon found himself laughing too, even as he massaged his temple.

“Are you free tonight?”

“No, and neither are you. We’re on our way to plans,” Jon pointed out, glancing at Val. She was still smirking.

“They have nice, dark hallways in the back of Lommy’s,” she replied. Jon was, abruptly, sent back in time many years to being a teenager and sliding down Ygritte’s body in the dark, and being interrupted by Sansa. “I’ve never had sex in a bar,” Val added thoughtfully.

He had. He remembered the look on Sansa’s face, remembered how Ygritte had teased him, half-playful and half-angry, about the encounter. _Cute redhead, Jon Snow,_ she’d said, eyeing him. _A little bird told me you like redheads. You like them a lot._ It had been the first nail in the coffin of their relationship. Ygritte had always been jealous, and at the time he had told himself she was being highly unreasonable.

Yet, when the subject of Ygritte’s jealousy had come up with Robb, Jon had not been able to bring himself to fully explain—even though said jealousy was supposedly so absurd, and bizarre, and misplaced. Part of him had known, part of him had understood that it would be unwise to draw attention to how he felt or didn’t feel about Sansa. “...So are you just going to leave me hanging, or…?”

In the front, high-energy techno mixed with fiddle music was playing.

“I’ve done it,” Jon said finally. “It’s not as fun as you might think.”

“Damn. It never is, is it?” she mused. “You know, every other man in the NW would literally kill to have a shot with me.”

“Except Sam,” Jon countered.

“Okay, fine; except Sam,” Val dismissed. “But literally every other man.”

“What about me?” Sam asked from the front.

“Tarly, would you ever cheat on your wife?” Val asked plainly, and Sam drew in a breath of horror so sharply that he choked on his own spit, and Val and Edd were snickering at him, but Jon could not bring himself to laugh. “You are so unbelievably emo,” Val added under her breath. “You have a stunning blonde offering to have no-strings-attached sex with you in a bar and you’re turning her down.”

He should have taken the opportunity. It was unlikely that he would have any others for a very long time, if at all, the way he was going. But the idea of groping around in the dark with someone who did not love him, with someone he did not love, had lost whatever appeal it might have had in the past. Sex served different purposes, he had always noticed. Sometimes it was to scratch a biological itch; sometimes it was to scratch an existential itch. When he and Val had fucked it had served both of those purposes: the fulfillment of the human purpose simultaneous with the reminder that he was alive, and still young.

But sex also was a conversation, a way of communicating with another person, a way of sharing, a way of saying things that had no other means of being said. It was so rare to feel the need to say those things; he had learned that well enough.

“There’s a girl,” he finally said, and he heard her snort so hard that she had to lean forward, and then they were laughing together again, softly, unheard by Sam or Edd.

They reached Lommy’s and Sam took so long to parallel park that both Val and Jon were actually begging him to let them do it for him. But finally he (mostly) accomplished parking, and they all went inside.

Lommy’s was a dive bar that was popular with NW agents, but also, of late, had become popular with the hipster and entrepreneur crowds. It had just the right amount of grit and grime to it to lend it a certain dark glamour. Pypar, Grenn, and a few other agents had already arrived and secured a table, and Jon spotted them waving at the other end of the bar. A Rolling Stones song was blaring as they descended into the cool, damp dark of the bar, where it was impossible to tell that it was still bright daylight outside—or even that it was summertime outside.

The bar was packed. Nearly half of the bar was taken up by what looked to be some kind of group meeting: a dozen men in tight jeans, cool trainers, thick glasses, and either faded band tees or too-tight button ups were all gathered together, blocking access to the pool table, to the chagrin of many of the other patrons.

“Thank god Pyp and Grenn got here early,” Val remarked as they pushed past the group. “I miss men being real men,” she added wistfully, eyeing one of the men in tight jeans who slithered past them, hands laden with shots of whiskey.

“I find that incredibly toxic and damaging, Val,” Sam informed her loudly as they reached the table. “Hegemonic masculini—”

“—Be quiet,” Val interrupted, turning and covering Sam’s mouth with her hand. “I’ll have sexy, buff firemen or no man at all.”

“I’m not a fireman but otherwise I possess all of the qualifications,” Pypar said as they sat down, rolling up one of his shirtsleeves and flexing and winking at Val.

“Evidently ‘sexy’ and ‘buff’ now mean _entirely_ different things,” Edd drawled without looking at Pypar.

Jon volunteered to buy the first round, if only to have an excuse to step away from everyone. He waited at the bar, where the barman, a skinny man with wild blond hair and a rodent-like face, was pulling their beers.

Out of boredom, Jon studied the large group of hipsters on the other side of the bar. They reminded him a bit of Bran, who had, since his latest girlfriend Meera, begun wearing increasingly ‘cool’ clothing that only garnered considerable teasing from Robb, Arya, and Rickon. Jon had always had a soft spot for Bran and hadn’t been able to bring himself to tease him too much.

One of them was on his feet, talking loudly, addressing the group, but over the Metallica, Jon could not quite hear. He studied the man until he realized, with a jolt of horror, his blood running cold then white-hot, who he was looking at.

It was Ramsay Bolton.

**Sansa**

When Sansa got home, the door was locked, and Ramsay was not at home. She was scared, until she remembered that he would be out a bit late for some meetup. His car was gone, the space in front of their house empty, but a man was standing beneath the sycamore tree in front of their house, smoking and talking on his mobile, his back to her. It was unusual to have people loitering on the sidewalk on their street, but not unheard of. She pushed through the door and locked it from the inside.

She had been held up a bit late at the office, and it was later in the evening—nearly six thirty, now. _That’s right,_ she remembered, _he said he’d be home by seven thirty._ She dropped her keys in the bowl, and stood in the foyer, staring out the glass of the front door at the dappled street outside, watching the world go by without her.

Nearly an hour without Ramsay.

She could have packed a bag and run, but where would she go? She had already contemplated calling the bank and reactivating her debit card, but surely Ramsay would be alerted to that. So she had no money. Where could she possibly go that would be safe, where Ramsay would not find her, without money? They only had one car and he had taken it. 

She could have called Mom, or Robb, or Arya, or even Jon, and for some time, she paced around her house, trying to summon the courage as her hands shook and fear, acidic and bubbling, rioted in the pit of her stomach. _Hi, it’s Sansa. Can I come visit for the weekend?_ But they would have to pick her up, and by the time they got to her, Ramsay would already be home. Even if she waited somewhere else, it would be enough time for him to learn she had gone, and to look for her.

Jon might be able to help her. But the idea of telling him any of the truth—the idea of tainting the beauty of their sapling friendship with the rotting filth of her relationship with Ramsay—was unbearable.

The bottom line was that she had no options, at least not for now. She had no safe options.

 _I have to plan this,_ she decided. _I have to be more careful._

She would have to lull Ramsay back into thinking that nothing was wrong. She would have to cut off all communication with Jon, at least for a little while. She would have to give back _The Two Towers._ She would have to convince Ramsay that she had had a change of heart, that she had no intention of deceiving him any further.

Otherwise, she would never get away.

She went up to the bathroom where she had hidden _The Two Towers_ , and went to fish it out from her makeup drawer—but it wasn’t there.

**Jon**

“Fifty dragons,” said the barman, shaking Jon out of his horror. Ramsay was talking to the group at large, gesturing with his hands, and even from afar he was magnetic, charismatic, engaging. Jon thought he might be sick.

“Right, thanks,” Jon said at last, handing the barman his card over the many beers he had bought.

“You wanna start a tab?” he heard distantly as he looked back at Ramsay. He was wearing a light blue shirt that made his eyes even more eerily blue.

“...I’ll...close out,” Jon said, tearing his attention from Ramsay and turning back to the barman. Sam was approaching.

“Need help carrying those, Jon?” he asked brightly. Sam’s clumsiness was legendary, but Jon handed him two of the beers to carry all the same. He heard a sharp gasp and prepared to hear the sound of glass shattering to follow, but Sam had not, in fact, dropped the beers. “That’s Ramsay Bolton,” Sam said in a hiss.

“Who?” Jon made a show of looking around, his blood thrumming in his ears.

“Tech genius, but he’s also somewhat infamous for developing what is considered, among serious gamers, to be the most violent game of all time,” Sam explained, face flushed as he gazed at Ramsay in some mixture of fear and awe.

“That’s a good thing?” Jon asked in disgust.

“Well, on the surface, no; of course not,” said Sam, “and I truthfully couldn’t bring myself to play the game, because the concept is so completely deplorable and evil. You can’t even download it on the normal web; you have to go to the dark web. But the mechanics of the graphics are truly astounding; they're revolutionary, really. The whole idea is that you have these dogs you can control, and the objective is to catch this girl who’s running away from you, and use the dogs to tear—”

“—What the fuck?” Jon thought he might be sick. “Don’t tell me any more,” he said disgustedly. He would have bet any amount of money that Sansa didn’t know about this. “Do people know about this game?”

“No, it’s completely underground, like I said. But he’s a big deal anyway, nowadays, for other stuff he’s done,” Sam explained. “But some of us also know him from that.” He sighed, staring at Ramsay. “It really is a shame that he had to make _that_ game in particular with that incredible algorithm.”

“A _shame_?” Jon asked, his face growing hot. “You call that a _shame?_ ”

“If you knew anything about graphics algorithms, you would get it,” Sam said defensively. “Like I said, I would never play a game like that, and I find it revolting that it exists. But he is a genius, of sorts. I’ve actually met him before, at a tech convention. Oh, look, he recognizes me.” And then Sam paused, and attempted to wave, and dropped the beers.

In a spectacular display, the glass shattered, and Sam was soaked in beer. “Oh, no!” he cried in horror.

“Tarly?” A bright, eerily musical voice came from behind Jon. “I thought I recognized you.”

Jon turned around slowly.

Ramsay Bolton was standing not one foot from Jon, smiling widely at them both. “Need a hand?” he asked Sam, who flushed and dropped to the ground and began picking up the shards of glass.

“Don’t bother,” said the barman loudly, coming around with a dustpan and a broom. “Just get out of the way.”

“Sorry, sorry, I’m so sorry,” Sam was gushing to the barman as they edged away from the mess. “I can’t believe I just did that.”

“Oh, it was my fault,” said Ramsay, but he was looking at Jon. “I shouldn’t have startled you like that. What a coincidence, Tarly. I wouldn’t have guessed you’d be a Lommy’s type.”

He was still looking at Jon. Jon returned the gaze, steadily. “I remember you telling me you preferred to spend your evenings playing tabletop games rather than hang out in bars,” he added slyly.

It was such an odd thing to say. He clearly had a point; he clearly was angling for something.

“Well, I did play Dungeons and Dragons every Friday for years,” Sam was rambling, oblivious to the tension. “But I don’t have the space to play it anymore, what with the little one at home.”

Ramsay’s smile broadened, his eyes glimmering as he gazed at Jon.

“Too bad. Who’s this handsome fellow, anyway? Don’t be rude, now—introduce us properly.”

“Oh, right. Ramsay, this is Jon Snow. Jon, this—this is Ramsay Bolton,” Sam said in a high, unsteady voice, clearly finally sensing the tension between them. Jon’s mouth had gone dry.

Ramsay knew who he was. There was no doubt in his mind about it. And that Ramsay was here tonight was no coincidence—there was no doubt in his mind about that, either.

Jon saw him for who he was immediately. He had met so many of Ramsay’s type throughout his career. He was a classic psychopath. He believed that the world existed for him to manipulate, believed that he was beyond consequences, believed that he was cleverer than everyone he knew—and perhaps he had enough evidence to support such a thought, given his success.

And he was grinning at Jon, looking at Jon like he was a meal about to be had.

“Jon Snow,” Ramsay repeated. “You’re another NW agent, are you? I’m such a fan of the NW.” He paused, narrowing his eyes into gleaming crescents at Jon as he tilted his head, studying him. “What about you, Agent Snow? Are you a tabletop gaming fan, too? I’m getting a very... _Lord of the Rings_ fan sort of vibe from you too, but maybe that’s just Tarly rubbing off on you.”

Jon thought of the book he had given Sansa last night.

He thought of how it was his old copy, the one he had had since he was twelve, the one he had so carefully printed his name and address inside of.

Ned had bought it for him.

He had cherished it as though it had been made of solid gold. He had cherished it so much that he had written his name in it, to be certain it could not be lost.

“I didn’t play those sorts of games growing up,” Jon replied calmly, even though he had never been so angry in his entire life, and looked Ramsay directly in the eye. “I spent my weekends on the ice, beating the shit out of people, actually.”

“Really?” Ramsay brightened. “A hockey player, are you? Me too!” He slung an arm around Jon, and beamed at Sam, who was simply staring at Jon in bewilderment. Every fiber of Jon’s being cringed in utter revulsion at being touched by this monster, but he had gone strangely calm even in his fury. “My wife has always _loved_ hockey players,” he told them, squeezing Jon. “Don’t know where it comes from. It’s the weirdest thing—not that I’m complaining, of course,” he added with a wink.

And then he leaned in even closer, so that his breath brushed Jon’s neck. “You know, speaking of my wife, and speaking of the NW, she had a run-in with NW agents recently. Turns out there was a bomb scare where she works. She had to give them a witness account, and everything. She was the only one who saw the suspect, it seems. Weird concidence—funny how things come full circle.”

Sam’s eyes widened, and Jon saw his lips part as he put the pieces together, saw the blood drain from his face. “Your friend’s quiet, Tarly.” Ramsay released Jon, and clapped him on the shoulder. “Nice seeing you, Tarly. Hope to see you at WeirCon again next year.”

“Y-yeah,” Sam squeaked. “S-see you at WeirCon.”

Ramsay turned back to Jon, and smiled.

“Nice to meet you, Agent Snow.”

Ramsay walked back to his group, and then, abruptly, he was hugging some of the others, and then making his leave.

Ramsay clearly knew about him, had clearly organized this meetup to run into him, and wanted him to know that he knew. He was taunting him—not only that, he was showing off just how much power he had.

And, Jon knew, he was not the only one that Ramsay intended on taunting, intended on intimidating. He thought he was so special, thought he was so powerful, but he was in every criminal psychology textbook, and there were thousands of him in jails all over the world. He was no different, and would behave no differently from all of the textbook psychopaths who had come before him. The only difference was that he was white collar, that he had been protected by privilege, but his privilege could not— _would not_ —protect him forever.

“I have to go,” Jon said, handing two more beers to Sam, and he followed Ramsay out of Lommy’s.

**Sansa**

Sansa had torn apart the bedroom, searching for _The Two Towers,_ but it was nowhere. It wasn’t in the bedroom, it wasn’t in the living room, and it wasn’t in Ramsay’s office area…she could not find it anywhere.

 _No._ It was Jon’s beloved book, and she knew, with powerful certainty, that Ramsay had taken it. And if Ramsay had taken it, that meant that it either was already destroyed, or would be destroyed soon.

And then she would have to explain to Jon that she had lost his book—in addition to having to find a way to tactfully cut off contact with him.

Heartbroken, she slumped on the floor of the second-floor living room, hugging her knees to her chest.

 _You could tell him,_ said a sly little voice. _You could tell him everything, and maybe he would understand…_

_But what if he doesn’t?_

She thought of his lips brushing against her forehead; thought of his hand, so gentle, on the back of her head. She did not think she could go back to life without that love and friendship, but in order to escape she would have to sacrifice the very thing that had reminded her that she deserved better, that she did not have to accept this life with Ramsay.

_You could tell him. You could call him right now and tell him._

_Jon is good. Jon is kind._

_He’ll understand._

But what if he didn’t?

She thought of her life with Ramsay stretching out before her: the months, the lonely, ugly, painful, loveless months she would have to wait until December to even get a raise, and then, after that, the painful months of saving, of waiting. Even though she would meet with Daenerys next week, there was no guarantee that she could help her. In all likelihood, Daenerys would not be able to help her, at least, not until she had saved up a significant amount of money.

Could she bear to live with Ramsay for that long? Could she stand to share a home, share a life, with someone who so clearly wanted her to be in pain?

She could go to Jon. He might understand. He might not.

It would be a risk.

He might be disgusted with her. Telling him might ruin everything, might destroy the sapling friendship they had been so lovingly cultivating.

And then she really would be alone.

 _But I’ve been alone,_ she realized. All these months, she had been so completely alone—and she had survived. Jon’s rejection would be excruciating—but she could survive it.

She got to her feet, shaking. She would go tell Jon, she’d ask if she could stay for the weekend until she figured out her next move, and if he said no—well, she would do something else. She didn’t know what she’d do, yet, but she would survive.

But she had to get out _now_.

She couldn’t wait any longer. She had to leave now—she would walk to Jon’s. She ran to the steps, heart racing, and then—

\--The front door swung open.

“Honey, I’m home,” Ramsay called, with heavy irony.


	6. Chapter Six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Had to repost this because there were some weird formatting issues and, somehow, a line from the previous draft that shouldn't have been in there. 
> 
> I'm adding an epilogue to this since there were a bunch of things I couldn't fit into this chapter.
> 
> There's some light violence in this chapter but nothing terribly graphic. 
> 
> Thanks to everyone who's been reading!

_“Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. ...For you alone, I think and plan.” - Jane Austen_

_“Pity? It was pity that stayed his hand.” - J. R. R. Tolkien_

**Ramsay**

Ramsay strode out into the golden, humid evening exhilarated, his vision sharper than ever and his hands clumsy with adrenaline. His beloved car, a sleek red Audi, was parked a little ways down the block, and he strode toward it, waiting,  _praying_ for Jon Snow to come after him. But the door never burst open, and Ramsay was almost disappointed. He would have loved to hear the door bang open, Jon Snow running after him. He would have loved a fight.

He rolled down the windows, and turned on the radio. Guns N’ Roses was blasting, and Ramsay slid on his new Ray Bans and ripped away from the curb with a shriek of his new tires.

In the privacy of his car, sitting in traffic, Ramsay allowed himself to laugh freely. He hadn't felt this carefree in years.

He had been leading such an unbearably stifled, constrained life for years now and it was getting to be just too much.  _Get the wife, get the nice house, settle down, let Dog Hunt be buried in the dark web._.. He had been  _so_ well-behaved. Surely he was due for some fun.

If only he'd gotten Pink pregnant already, then his good-boy image would be perfect and he would be able to let loose more often. Alas, having no outlet for his stress had taken a toll on him, physically, and getting Pink pregnant had not been possible, yet. But tonight he would make a new attempt.

His new prescription was in his glove compartment, along with Snow's copy of  _The Two Towers_. Pink wouldn't be happy about his new prescription—she would probably be annoying, and cry, and argue, seeing as she had clearly been fucking another man. His blood began to pound in his ears with excitement, and he pressed down harder on the gas.

He might even have to chase her around the house.

Oh, but his heart was  _racing._

He had put up with her for so long; she fucking  _owed_ him this.

Roping Pink into marriage had been the most delicate of tasks, but of course, he had been more than up to the job. Pink was not technically stupid—in fact at times she could even be unexpectedly clever—and so he had had to bide his time, had to get to know her, before making his move.

He had first been introduced to her by a friend of his father's, Petyr Baelish, four years ago now. Baelish, who had more connections than anyone, had moved into a fine brownstone with a rooftop deck, and had held a housewarming party. Pink had been invited, along with so many other fuckable girls.

Ramsay was almost positive that Baelish had intended Pink for himself, as the man had been plying her with the most costly of white wines and spewing whispered compliments. Idiot. He thought he was so clever, but Ramsay, of course, had outsmarted him. He could still remember the look on the moron’s face from across the rooftop deck as he’d seen Ramsay standing with Pink, her face flushed with happiness and too much wine and the warm evening air. Ramsay had resisted the urge to wink at the little man.  _The player just got played, Baelish,_ he could remember thinking with a burst of adrenaline.

She had been the most fuckable girl at the entire party, without contest. He had first spotted her out on the deck, standing beneath a string of twinkle lights that had set off her vibrant hair, and had been entranced. She had an old-fashioned beauty about her, with delicate, classic features, and she had a virginal appeal, with her prim pink shirt dress—she so often wore pink—and espadrilles, and her pale skin and shy smile. So many men had been looking at her, trying to dream up the right opening line, but Ramsay had simply walked past them and introduced himself.

He had seen immediately that Pink would be the one: the wife he had been told that he so sorely needed to change his image. Unaware of her physical beauty, Pink had been so flattered to be approached—shocked, even. Initially it had been difficult to draw her out, and he had spent nearly two hours listening to her blather on about books, family, fashion, and all other manner of idiotic topics. He had had to work to stay engaged, and would have preferred to do almost anything else, but he needed the right keywords, the right clues, to gain her trust—and slowly, over the course of many glasses of expensive white wine, he had uncovered the clues.

Pink was insecure about her intelligence, so he had learned he would need to very carefully flatter her there—not too much, of course, otherwise she would begin to suspect—but just enough to touch that part of her that so desperately craved validation. Pink was also insecure about her height, and luckily he was just barely taller than her when she wore heels, otherwise it might have all gone to pot. She was also a romantic, and clearly very self-conscious about being nearly thirty and unmarried, as she had mentioned, within the first forty-five minutes of their conversation, that she was "happy to be single" and "didn't think that online dating was worth the trouble."

From there Pink had required seemingly endless dates: brunches at outdoor cafes where he had to listen to her talk even more; trips to a local garden where he had had to act interested in cultivars of roses while she gushed over their pointless beauty; meetings at bars where he had to meet her friends, all just as simpering and dull as she was, only fatter and uglier. At least Pink was beautiful.

For two years he had carefully kept this up, sending flowers at just the right intervals, balancing careful flattery— _you really are so clever, Sansa_ —with careful degradation— _it seems like you never really mattered to your family, Sansa_ —to make her cling harder. It had been exhausting, but when he had finally proposed—with a bottle of pink champagne and a canary diamond ring—she had burst into tears and accepted, and he had won.

He didn't know why having a wife made you seem so much less threatening, but it had worked. Dog Hunt had been mostly buried, except for among weirdos like that fat fuck Tarly, and as a result, with his new family-man image, it was so much easier to acquire the venture capital that had so eluded him before. He had to admit that his lawyer had been right: the wedding had been a brilliant plan.

They had eloped but he had posted so many sappy pictures on Instagram—and so had Pink—that the world might as well have been at their wedding. And after they had married, he had brought Pink to every tech event, where she had nervously fluttered about, batting her lashes and blushing and dazzling every ugly old man in a suit. How could a man with a wife like her ever be considered distasteful, or untrustworthy? His personal capital had skyrocketed overnight.

If only they'd gotten a dog—maybe a golden retriever—then he might have sealed the deal even further, but the idea of raising a dog—those perfect creatures—alongside such a whimpering, whiny moron like Pink was too much to be borne.

But Pink had grown less enamored of him, of late. He almost preferred her like this. It was so much more interesting to watch her test the limits of their relationship. He loved imagining what her face must have looked like when she'd tried to use her debit card today—because after all, he had gotten the alert that a transaction had been attempted with the deactivated card, for four dragons, at a cafe in the Tarly building.

He could just picture her blinking in shock, her face crumpling in horror and shame.  _A small price to pay_ , he would tell her,  _for all of the times I had to sit and listen to your endless, mindless, stupid chatter about books, about your family, about fucking poetry._

Ramsay pulled up to the curb outside of the brownstone, watching a fat man jolt in surprise at the screech of tires. The man was wearing a filthy hoodie, far too warm for the weather, and when he turned round, Ramsay saw he had bloodshot eyes and a sloppy, sweaty face. He looked like a raging alcoholic.

He retrieved his special prize and his new prescription from the glove compartment, and then got out of the car, his eyes meeting that of the drunk’s.

"Can I help you?" he asked. He wasn't paying this insane mortgage to have drunks loiter out front, and this stupid cunt looked like a Dog Hunt fan.  _Not good_.

"S-sorry, just waiting for a ride," the man stammered. "They should be here any minute."

Ramsay promptly forgot about the filthy loser, and found himself beaming as he unlocked the front door. Pink was already home—he could see her keys in the bowl, her purse dropped, forgotten, on the floor.

"Honey, I'm home," he called, something like happiness coursing through his veins. He heard a sharp intake of breath—a gasp of fear, he thought with a clench of excitement—as he locked the door behind himself.

**Jon**

"WAIT!” Sam called after him, stopping Jon from going out the door. “Is he—oh god, is he the one who's been beating—"

"Yes. I have to go."

"Take my—" Jon took the beers from Sam before he could drop them too. "Here, take my car," Sam finished, fishing his keys out of his pocket. Jon caught the keys and looked at Sam questioningly, but Sam only nodded fiercely.

“Take the car, Jon. We’ll find our own way back. This _is_ why god made Drogon, after all," Sam said earnestly, referencing the taxi-app that had become popular in the last few years. “Mormont will call me an enabler,” Sam mused, “but if I weren’t so useless in a crisis, I’d be going with you myself.”

Jon ran out into the golden, humid evening, his vision sharper than ever and his hands clumsy with adrenaline as he unlocked Sam’s electric car.

**Sansa**

"Ramsay."

She froze at the top of the stairs. Ramsay was standing at the foot, looking happier than she had ever seen him. He looked up at her with his face shining. In his joy he was rendered handsome, turned back into the man she had met on that rooftop deck party four years ago, where she had been enchanted by white wine and twinkle lights and someone who had somehow said all the right words.

"Sansa," he said in a low, thrilled voice.

He was holding something in his hand: a white paper bag, the kind from a pharmacy, and...a book.

He watched her gaze flick to the book. "Oh. Is this yours?"

He paused, opening the book and flicking to the first page. "Hmm. I don't think it is. See, it says 'Jon Snow,' here, and ...that isn't your name at all." He closed the book with a soft  _fwup_ and looked back up at her. She swallowed.

"Is that what you saw the doctor for today?" She pointed to the paper bag.

"This?" Ramsay rattled the bag with a grin. "It certainly is."

"What is it?" She clutched the bannister, unsure of why she was so afraid of what was in that bag.

"Come down here; let's have a glass of wine."

Ramsay turned away, still holding the pharmacy bag and  _The Two Towers_ , and she heard him walk into their kitchen. "Come on, hurry up. I'm in the mood for red."

Sansa walked down the steps slowly, holding her breath, staring at the front door.

Did she dare?

She heard the  _clink_ of Ramsay setting a wine bottle on the granite countertop in the kitchen; heard the wet  _pop_ of a cork being pulled out.

She did dare.

Sansa crept down the last few steps, heart in her throat, and sprinted to the front door—but in a flash, somehow, Ramsay was there, grabbing the back of her blouse and yanking her backward so hard that she was thrown back onto the floor. Her body throbbed with pain as she coughed, the wind knocked from her. Silhouetted by the dying light outside, Ramsay stood over her. "I just opened some wine. Where are you going?" His eyes were glimmering.

She had never seen him like this. In all of their time together, she had never seen him so radiantly joyful, and it was so much more horrible than his rage.

He held out a hand for her, to help her up, and, the bile rising in her throat, she took his hand. He pulled her up with surprising gentleness, and she swayed slightly, knocking into his chest. "I know you prefer white burgundy, but you're really going to love this wine, I think," he told her, pulling her toward the kitchen, his grip tightening until her wrist was on fire. "It's a barolo. Nice and rich."

In the kitchen, she stood by the counter, watching him pour two glasses of wine. Between them, on the granite countertop, lay the pharmacy bag and  _The Two Towers_.

The copy wasn't harmed...yet.

But what was in the bag? "Here."

Ramsay handed her a full glass of wine. "Now, we have something to celebrate tonight, darling Sansa."

She took the wine in a shaking hand. His eyes were burning blue as they perceived all the little ways that she was afraid. "I finally went to see a doctor about my little bedroom problem, and, thanks to the wonders of modern medicine, there's a solution!"

He set down his glass and unfolded the top of the bag, and retrieved an orange pill bottle from inside. "I took the first one this morning," he informed her, setting the orange pill bottle in her hand. The bottle was filled with little blue pills. "What does the label say? You're so good with big words."

Sansa turned the bottle over to reveal the label.

 _Sildenafil Citrate. Generic for: Viagra_.

"It's Viagra," she said at last, handing him back the bottle.

The kitchen was intolerably silent as their eyes met over the rim of the wine glasses.

"It's been a while," Ramsay said softly. "I've missed it." He held out his wine glass. "Cheers."

The  _clang_ of glass against glass was a harsh sound, like a cruel bell. Sansa took a sip of the wine, as Ramsay's eyes were on her, but she could not seem to swallow it.

Ramsay took a long, sensual swig, tilting his head back, his throat muscles working grotesquely.

He set the empty glass down with a gasp. "That wine cost fifty seven dragons, Sansa. Aren't you going to drink it?"

**Jon**

The car ride was hellish. In the cramped, humid space, alone with his thoughts in the mire of traffic, he was forced to examine his choices.

Here he was, being a white knight again...and as Mormont had always,  _always_ told him, white knights never really saved anyone. They made a big mess with a big gesture—a mess that invariably would fall on the victim to live within.

If he did confront Ramsay, he could potentially make things so much worse for Sansa.

If he did not confront Ramsay... The possibilities spiraled out before him, all of them unbearable.

Ramsay clearly felt he had just gotten away with something, and he would be dangerous—he would be seeking the next high, the next lost girl to hunt down and tear apart. He might do anything—or he might do nothing. There was no way of predicting precisely what his next move might be.

Could he really just turn around, go back to Lommy's, and forget about it? Could he really stand the risk that Ramsay might decide to hurt Sansa further—now that he had gotten away with one thing—and be okay with it?

What if Ramsay did become more violent tonight? It would be Jon’s fault. He had been the one to lead Sansa away; he had been the one to give Sansa the books that had so clearly incriminated them in Ramsay's mind.

It was just as Mormont had said, really. He had been a white knight from the start, and he had made a mess, and had made things worse for Sansa, ultimately.

But that could not be the only truth, could it? He was certain that Sansa seemed happier, her eyes brighter, her smile wider. Their time together had brought her happiness—was that not worth something? And yet, that bit of happiness might just make things so much worse for her.

Maybe he did have some deep, narcissistic urge to be a savior—but it didn’t  _feel_ like that. He did not find himself fantasizing about how Sansa might react to him helping her get away from Ramsay. Instead, he found himself thinking, in agony, of how she might look if Ramsay really did take a more violent turn. He found himself thinking of how she had looked when she had given him the framed pictures—it had been like seeing a garden bloom in his apartment, out of the old, stained tiles and forlorn carpet. He found himself thinking of the little girl in her ballet costume, talking so fast it was almost hard to hear her; of the girl whose head had been bent over her textbooks so studiously every night, of the girl who had spent months sewing her medieval dress, surrounded by books on medieval clothing, determined to be as historically accurate as possible.

It was not that he wanted to save Sansa, or that he needed to be the one to do it; it was that he could not bear to see her harmed again.

He supposed that everyone had predicted this about him. His behavior would surprise no one. This was really who he was. It was why he had always loved  _Lord of the Rings_ so much—there were undoubtedly so many evils in the world, and it was the duty of good to battle against evil, to keep it at bay.

He would not coexist with evil. He would not watch it pass him by. He would not do nothing.

Perhaps it was why he had been starting to feel distant from his colleagues, of late, and why he and Val would never work out. The idea that it was hopeless, and that he ought to separate himself, to abandon the people that mattered most to him—just based on a few studies discussed in textbooks—was unthinkable to him, and it always would be.

Experience might have taught him that the statistics had some merit, but his heart told him that the only reason those statistics existed was that everyone else had so thoroughly, so grossly failed the people who became those statistics.

He turned down Sansa’s street, and pulled to a stop on the broad avenue shaded from the very last shouts of daylight by sycamore leaves, the street lined with handsome brownstones decorated with tasteful gardens and unusual plants in artful planters lining each stoop. It was the sort of place that Sansa would have fit in so well; it did not look like the sort of street that could house the hell that Sansa had been living in.

Jon got out of the car and locked the door. He didn't know what to do now. He hadn't made a decision. He had no plan.

The Bolton house was further down the street than he had realized. A portly man was lingering out front, pacing frantically. As Jon approached, the man looked up at him, the movement fearful and squirrel-like, and Jon froze in his tracks.

Bloodshot eyes, a ruddy nose, patchy blond-grey hair... It was Dontos Hollard, the missing-in-action almost-bomber that Sansa had helped them identify.

They regarded each other for a moment. Dontos Hollard was holding something small and black in his meaty, shaking hand, and had sweat thoroughly through his sweatshirt.

Normally in crisis situations Jon had always gone strangely calm; it was really a requisite of his job and had been something he had always counted on.

But Sansa was trapped inside her house with Ramsay.

He could not stay calm.

This was not just a crisis.

This was  _everything._

"Beautiful evening, isn't it?" Jon was not normally one for conversations about the weather, but he knew that the first rule was to establish engagement, to draw the person in, to establish a common bond. He watched Dontos Hollard attempt a weak smile.

"B-beautiful, y-yes," he stammered, turning away from Jon.

"I'm actually lost," Jon pressed, even as his heart was pounding. Hollard was holding something in his hand, too small to be a mobile. Hollard didn't turn back around to face him. "Could you help me?"

While Hollard was turned around, Jon reached into his pocket for his mobile, and with one hand dialed Donal Noye, the NW's bomb specialist.

**Sansa**

“I’m just not quite ready for wine yet,” she said, attempting a smile. “We don’t even have any dinner ready.”

“Oh, but I’m not hungry,” Ramsay said earnestly, skirting the counter and advancing on her. “What I want is  _you_.” He paused, so that they were mere inches apart, so that she could taste his cologne in the back of her throat. “And I think  _your_ appetite has already been sated...hasn’t it?”

His voice was barely audible. Without looking away from her, he reached out and slapped a hand over  _The Two Towers._

“Appetite?” Beyond Ramsay’s shoulder she saw the gleaming knives in the knife block, saw the heavy pot on the stovetop, cleaned and never put away from two nights ago. The kitchen was full of weapons...she would need to stay in the kitchen. He wouldn’t attack her in here.

Ramsay stepped closer, his forehead brushing hers.

“Had your fill of Jon Snow?”

She thought of teenaged Jon’s precise handwriting, the handwriting that was so beloved to her, that so clenched round her heart. What was it about him that so drew her, that so spoke to her soul? He moved her in that indefinable way that the rising melody of Brahms’  _Intermezzo_ did, that the particular shade of burning titian that Waterhouse had used for the Lady’s hair in  _The Lady of Shalott_ did, that the prose that Austen had so carefully crafted did. And just as her heart would never  _not_ ache to listen to  _Intermezzo;_ just as she would never tire of drinking in that deep, fiery shade in  _The Lady of Shalott;_ just as she would read Austen over and over again and never find the words stale; so she could never have her fill of Jon. Even when they had been so young, just foolish, emotional teenagers on the precipice of adulthood, he had been able to bring her to her knees with a single blazing look, and she had nothing to gain from denying that any longer.

“I haven’t had any of Jon Snow,” she replied, just as quiet.

“Any?” He was touching her jaw. “Surely, you’ve had  _some._ I’ve met him, you know. He’s so handsome. And a hockey player, too,” he breathed. “A dark, mysterious, handsome hockey player. Isn’t that what you like? It all makes so much more sense to me now. All of the fucking weird hangups you’ve always had...you’ve always wanted one dark, mysterious, handsome hockey player to fuck you. And I was the closest you could get, but he's the real prize.”

When had he met Jon?

...And where was Jon now?

_Oh, god._

Her eyes were burning with angry tears.

_Isn’t that what you like?_

All of the hopeless fucks they had had—because it was fucking, after all; that was not making love—told her that he knew  _nothing_ of what she liked. She had not known that it had mattered, until she had learned what it was like to be touched with real love—until Jon had kissed her forehead, the faintest brush of his lips against her skin, a kind of touch that had so little to do with physical contact and so much to do with a connection of the souls, and that was precisely what made the physical touch so much sweeter.

 _That_ was what she liked.

“You don’t know what I like,” she countered in a low, shaking voice. His lips, just barely too full, twisted. “And you don’t care what I like.”

“Oh, I do like you with a little spice,” he observed. “I like you  _so_ much  _more_ with some spice.”

**Jon**

_Please fucking figure it out, Noye,_ Jon prayed, just barely hearing Noye pick up, and repeat, “hello? Snow? Did that punk butt-dial me?”

“I-I’m not from around here,” Hollard said, too loud, stepping back from Jon. “I c-can’t help you.”

“Hey, is that your phone?” Jon tried now, wildly.  _I’m fucking this up._ His heart was hammering against his throat. Sansa’s house was dark. What horrors were happening inside—and why was the bomber outside of her house? “Mine’s dead; maybe I could make a call. I thought I saw it in your hand,” he added loudly.  _Please fucking figure it out. Please fucking figure it out._

“It’s dead, the battery died,” Hollard said, hiding his hand behind his back so foolishly.

“Snow? Hello? Did you butt-dial me?” Noye’s voice was coming from his pocket, sounding deeply hassled.

“Really? What kind of phone is that, anyway? I need a new phone.”

_I sound absolutely fucking insane._

All of his skills, all of his training had flown out the window entirely, in his abject terror.  _Sansa Sansa Sansa_ his blood was rushing.

 _Please figure it out, Noye._ “It looks so small,” Jon added desperately, walking towards Hollard. “I really could use a new phone. Fits in the palm of your hand, right? What kind is it? What’s the tape on it? Is it broken?”

“Oh,  _fuck_ ,” he heard Noye say. “Alright, Snow, tracing your call now. Sit tight.”

“I-it’s an old flip-phone,” Hollard was saying, still backing away.

The street was deathly quiet: everyone was inside, eating dinner, as the last of the evening light faded.

And coming from within Sansa’s house, Jon heard a scream and a crash.

**Sansa**

“Well? Drink the wine, Sansa.”

“I don’t want—”

He lunged and was gripping her by her hair, twisting it so painfully that she thought he might rip it out, and then pulling her towards the living room. He jerked her, hard, and she let out a cry of pain and reached out, helplessly, for  _anything_ to grab onto—and in the process knocked into the end table by the hunter green leather couch, knocking an antique lamp off the table and smashing it.

“Now look what you’ve done. Look.” He twisted her by the hair and stars of pain winked in her vision as she was thrown onto her knees on the floor, shards of glass cutting through her jeans. “Don’t tell me what you don’t want. You’ve gotten nothing  _but_ what you want!”

She reeled with pain as Ramsay let go of her hair at last and stepped back. She shifted backwards, her shins and knees on fire, shards of glass hitting the floor with little  _clicks_ as they fell from her knees. She looked up at Ramsay, shaking. He was holding  _The Two Towers,_ and smiling, his eyes wide and hair wild, a high flush on his cheeks, shoulders rising and falling as he stared down at her. “Tell me why, Sansa, you were hiding this from me?”

Ramsay held up the book as he took a step away from her, towards the empty hearth. “After all, it’s just a book. Why hide it?”

“I-I wasn’t hiding it,” she began desperately, stalling for time, trying, blinded by terror, to calculate her options.

“No? So then you just leave books in your makeup drawer regularly. Good to know!” He flipped through the pages. “And yet, it’s got another man’s name in it. And you want to know something?”

She said nothing, merely stared at him mutely. He took another step closer to the hearth, and took the silver lighter that they kept on the mantle for candles, watching her face carefully, with clinical fascination. “I  _said,_ do you want to know something?”

Jaw trembling, she forced herself to nod, as she slowly got to her feet. Ramsay flicked the lighter open, then closed, open, then closed, rhythmically. “I can’t hear you,” he sang softly. A pale blue flame flickered beneath  _The Two Towers._ “I asked you if you wanted to know something.”

“Yes.” Sansa stared at the flame caressing the edge of the book, not quite close enough to catch. Bile was rising in her throat, burning acid. “Yes, I want to know something,” she said miserably. Ramsay’s eyes glimmered.

“What’s the magic word?”

“Please.”

“Good girl,” he observed, running the lighter beneath the pages. “I’ll tell you something, since you asked so nicely. I went to Braavos Gym. The strangest thing—they said you’d never been even once, yet. They said you only came, purchased a membership, and then left.”

“I can expl—”

“—I’m not finished yet.” Ramsay looked down at the book, flipped it open with one hand, to display the inside cover. “Naturally, like any man, I got curious. Why would my wife  _lie_ about where she was? Why would my sweet, innocent wife  _lie?_ But I didn’t want to upset you, of course, by confronting you—so I did my own research.

"And I found your mobile phone going to the north side each night you  _lied_ and told me you were at spin class. And, naturally, I got curious about why my sweet, innocent wife would go to the north side. I thought, why, there’s nothing there but shitty apartments. So I did a little more research—and, it’s the strangest thing,” he said brightly, at last looking back up at her. “Crazy coincidence, but I found that my sweet, innocent wife was going to the apartment of some  _man_ named Jon Snow.”

There was a ringing in her ears. She struggled to breathe, her eyes burning, as the corner of the book at last caught flame. She knew Ramsay was watching her face, waiting with relish to see her pain. “And then I found my wife holding this fucking book to her chest like it’s a fucking man, and I looked on the inside cover, and that name again—Jon Snow—was on the inside! And not only that—she then  _hid_  this book with this man’s name.”

With a flare of palest gold, the book truly caught fire. “Whoops, almost got burned.”

Ramsay tossed the burning book into the empty hearth, the pages curling, cracking, turning sapphire and then black, as fingers of gold shot upward. He looked back at her. “Oh, sorry—was that important to you?”

His voice was so silky, so soft. Tears were streaming freely down her cheeks and she despised herself for crying for him. It was like he was burning Jon himself.

“You are evil,” she whispered, covering her mouth in horror.

“Oh,  _I’m_ evil,” Ramsay began with a callous laugh, pacing away from the hearth and back toward her. “  _I’m_ evil, for burning a fucking book—but you, the  _adulteress,_ ” he said with a flourish, “are so fucking innocent.”

“I would never cheat,” Sansa said in a raw voice, her fury rising—a fury she had never before known.

How had this happened to her? She stared at Ramsay, so filled with rage and hatred that she could only tremble. How had she become married to this vile, foul man?

And how was she  _ever_ going to get away from him?

“No? Then prove it,” Ramsay said now, in a low, sly, teasing voice, as he approached her. “And don’t tell me you don’t want to, because that dog won’t hunt.”

**Jon**

Hollard shook at the sound of Sansa’s scream as though he’d been struck, meaty fist tightening around the detonator in his grip, and Jon lost whatever remaining sense he had left.

Jon lunged, hitting the detonator out of Hollard’s hand where it skittered across the pavement, out of reach. It was constructed from an old mobile phone, wrapped in electrical tape to attach it to additional homemade circuitry, but Jon only saw it for a fleeting instant before Hollard, with unexpected strength, flipped him over onto his back so hard that the wind was knocked from him, his right arm pinned beneath him at an excruciating angle, and he heard his own mobile grind against the pavement beneath him with a sickening, gritty  _crunch_.

“Nngh—no!” Hollard grunted furiously, as Jon dug his hands into Hollard’s hoodie, preventing him from lunging for the detonator. He reeked of whiskey and illness and vinegar-like sweat, the stench so bad that Jon felt his stomach turn even as he held onto Hollard.

The struggle was furious, a mess of sweaty limbs and pained grunts. At one point, Jon’s head was smacked against the pavement and he saw stars and almost let go of Hollard, but at the last chance looped his leg around Hollard’s once more, and rolled them over so that they smacked into the sycamore in front of Sansa’s house. Just an arm’s length away, the detonator waited for the victor of their struggle.

Jon gasped as Hollard punched him in the stomach. He coughed, weakened, but swung back and hit Hollard in the jaw, stunning him. Hollard let out a cry of pain and fell to the side, and Jon snatched his opportunity and flipped on top of Hollard, pinning him in place. He registered wet warmth trickling down his temple; and his right arm, which had been crushed beneath Hollard, was throbbing and not moving quite the way he wanted to, but he couldn’t think of it now.

He had to make sure Hollard did not get anywhere near that detonator.

**Sansa**

She had to lure Ramsay to the kitchen, where she would have more options for weapons, but he was currently blocking her way to the kitchen. Swallowing the urge to be sick, she spoke calmly.

“Al-alright,” she said, and Ramsay’s eyes narrowed. “Take me—in the kitchen. I-I’ve always wanted to do it on the kitchen counter.”

Ramsay threw his head back and laughed, a musical, near-hysterical laugh.

“Oh, she’s getting clever now. So cute. I love watching you try to think,” he said delightedly. “But the thing is that I  _don’t_ want to do that.” He took a leisurely step towards her. “Why not do it in here—why not next to the fireplace? It’ll be so romantic, and I know you just love  _Lord of the Rings._ We’ll do it right next to where the book burned.”

There was nothing next to the hearth that she could use as a weapon—if he pinned her down there, she would be out of options.

She couldn’t prolong the situation—Jon had taught her that she had to get away.

Could she try for the door again?

They lunged at the same time, and Ramsay tackled her to the ground, smacking her head against the hardwood floor.

**Jon**

Hollard kicked wildly, but Jon held his fists down—but how long could he hold Hollard down? The man was enormous—probably twice his weight alone—but surprisingly strong, far stronger than Jon would have ever guessed.

He wanted nothing more than to wrench the bomb’s location from Hollard, knock the man out, and go and get Sansa—but his right arm was throbbing—probably sprained—and he was feeling increasingly dizzy from the blow to his head.

“Get— _off_ —” Hollard sat up swiftly, and smacked his forehead into Jon’s, sending Jon backward onto the pavement. His vision darkened briefly, and he felt Hollard scuffle out from under him, and, dazedly, Jon clumsily reached forward again, desperately grappling at Hollard’s sweatshirt with his left hand, trying to fight off the urge to be sick. Everything faded except for the little black detonator a few feet away, as Hollard’s fingertips grazed the detonator.

**Sansa**

Sansa reeled in pain as she felt Ramsay turn her over. The blow to her head had been too hard....  _I have to stun him,_ she thought distantly, as she felt his clammy hands on her wrists. Her urge was to fight against his grip...but everything was moving too fast...He was kneeling between her legs as he gripped her wrists so hard she thought they would simply snap...

And she lifted her left foot up, and drove her heel downward into his calf as hard as she could.

Ramsay let out a cry of pain. She felt him twist upward, away from her, and she blindly, mindlessly drew her knee up, and kneed him in the groin with all of her strength.

“You  _fucking—_ ” He couldn’t finish his sentence as he let out a growl of pain that was so foul, so animal, that it made her stomach clench, but he had at last let go—and she kneed him again the groin, even harder now that he was no longer gripping her wrists, so she could slide backward.

She wildly kicked backwards, away from him, as he buckled in pain, falling on his side, and she kicked him once more in the face. As she scrambled to her feet, Ramsay got to his as well, blood streaming from his nose, and he reached out and grabbed her wrist in one clammy, vise-like grip.

She twisted her wrist with all her might and broke free.

**Jon**

It was his last chance. He was right-handed but he’d have to make do with a left hook. He had always been top of his class at hand-to-hand combat at the academy—his left hook would have to do.

He threw himself forward, pinning Hollard down just as Hollard grasped at the detonator and it slid through his fingers once more and skittered another inch away. But an inch was not far enough. Hollard was groaning, flailing wildly, and Jon held his head in place with his nearly-useless right hand, and punched Hollard hard as he could in the left temple.

Hollard writhed in pain briefly, and then sagged beneath him, unconscious.

Reeling with dizziness and pain, Jon scrambled off of the unconscious man and lunged for the detonator, holding it in a shaking hand, and turned back to the house. Sirens were filling the air, unbearably loud, now.

And the front door suddenly opened with a bang, and Sansa, bleeding and pale and shaking, emerged, and froze in the doorway at the sight of him, her eyes widening as she took in the sight of him, and Hollard’s limp body on the ground behind him.

**Sansa**

Jon was standing before her, blood running down his temple and staining his white shirt. He was giving her that blazing look of his just as the wail of sirens grew intolerable—police cars were coming down the street with screeches of tires. She stumbled down the front steps, struggling to breathe as she took in the horror of what had just happened.

“Hold on, I’m—” Jon stepped away from her, holding something small and black in his hand with extra care. The police and NW vans pulled to a screeching halt behind him on the road, and she heard the front door smack open behind her, and saw Jon’s face contort with complete and utter fury, a fury she had never before seen. She turned, slowly, to see Ramsay standing in the doorway, blood dribbling from his nose.

In sharp contrast to Jon’s fury, and in spite of the blood, the look Ramsay gave her was cold and dead, calmly calculating. And at the sight of the police, he slowly retreated back into the house.

When she turned back around, the SWAT team had surrounded the man lying on the ground, and Jon was handing the little black object—was it an old mobile phone?—to a man whose gut was putting his bulletproof vest under significant strain, and whose left sleeve was pinned up. He turned away from Jon just as a dozen men dressed all in black pushed past them.

As they went inside, Sansa saw ‘Bomb Squad’ printed on the back of their black vests, and a thrill of horror shook her. She felt Jon’s hand on her arm, steadying her.

“Is there a  _bomb_ inside—”

“—I think so, yeah,” Jon interrupted. “You need to get to the hospital.”

“So do you,” she said, studying the thick dark blood running down his face. He looked pale, and was favoring his right arm. He hadn’t let go of her yet, though, and he was giving her the look he had given her in the car the other night just before he had kissed her.

“You did it,” he said quietly, barely audible amid the chaos around them. She opened her mouth to reply, but they were torn apart, and she was being ushered to an ambulance as he was pulled away by another NW agent.

* * *

**Three Hours Later**

* * *

 

She couldn’t stop pacing, even though her whole body was starting to throb with pain. She was cold in just the hospital gown, but the blanket on her bed was too itchy.

Any moment now, Daenerys Targaryen would be here.

She hadn’t heard anything yet—from Jon, or from Ramsay, or about the bomber—and had spent the last few hours being interviewed by the police and examined by nurses and doctors.

She hated wearing the hospital gown, as it put so many of her bruises on display, livid green and purple and blue marring her skin, a diary of Ramsay’s rage. She wanted to wear her own clothes, but Daenerys had told her to leave the hospital gown on, as when she came they would be taking pictures of her injuries.

Their phone conversation had been brief. Sansa had not even wanted to call her, but the police had suggested she find a lawyer, and at the moment Daenerys was her only option. She had called her and explained the situation—as best as she could, as she herself still knew so little—and, to her shock, Daenerys had only had a few questions: which hospital was she staying at, and what was her dress and shoe size?

“I’ll be there in an hour,” Daenerys had said before ringing off.

That had been one hour ago.

Baelor Memorial’s emergency department was noisy and chaotic around her, though the curtains had been drawn around her bed to give her some privacy and preserve her dignity, so that no one could stare at her bruises.

She wanted to see Jon. She wanted to see her family. Most of all, she wanted to go  _home_ —but she didn’t have a home anymore, not really. Her mind was buzzing with fears: what would she do now? Where would she go? What might Ramsay do now? And why,  _why_ had the bomber been outside of her house?

She paused in her pacing when she heard sharp, rapid  _clacks_ of stilettos striking linoleum.

“Why isn’t my client in a private room?” came a loud, rich, imperious voice. “Are you trying to retraumatize her? Get us a private room.”

And then the curtain was pulled aside, and Sansa came face to face with Daenerys Targaryen.

She was far more petite than Sansa had been picturing: even in her nude patent-leather stilettos, she would not even approach Sansa’s height. She had long, platinum blonde hair, and was clad in an impeccably-tailored navy shift dress and bearing a handbag that Sansa herself had wildly coveted but known she would never afford, and she was certain that if Daenerys turned round she would see that infamous red painted on the soles of her stilettos. She was also carrying several glossy shopping bags whose faces bore the emblems of rather high-end shops.

And she was looking at Sansa with utter fascination, her full lips curving in delight.

“You wonderful, fierce girl,” she said by way of greeting, and pulled the curtain shut behind her. Sansa felt her face grow warm, even more noticeable in the fluorescent lighting. “Let’s get you a real room for now so we can take some pictures, and then we’ll make some plans.”

“Can we actually do that?” Sansa asked dubiously. “I’m barely injured—”

The nurse that she had barked at earlier poked his head in.

“Ms Targaryen, ma’am, we’ve found a private room for your client,” he said in a cowering tone before slinking off, and Daenerys looked back at Sansa with a smug look.

“I just did,” she said.

They made their way to the private room, with Sansa sick with guilt at taking up the private room, and wondering how she would ever be able to pay for such a thing.

“The doctor will be back to check on you again in a half hour or so,” the nurse told them as he ushered them into the room, “and then you’ll be discharged.”

The door clicked shut, and Sansa and Daenerys turned to face each other as Daenerys set the bags down. Daenerys studied her bare arms and legs.

“I still haven’t heard anything from anyone,” Sansa told Daenerys as she rummaged through her designer satchel and produced a digital camera.

“I called Jon,” Daenerys said, squinting as she turned on the camera. “He’s on his way over. Out of his mind about you, naturally. And Bolton’s been questioned and is in touch with his own lawyer. Jon couldn’t tell me anything about the bomber, though,” she added, turning back to Sansa. She offered a kind smile. “Now for the hard part. We need to document these injuries as clearly as possible so they can match the hospital’s records. I’ll need you to undress.”

“O-of course,” Sansa said, looking down and reaching behind herself to untie the hospital gown. Cold air rushed against her tender skin and she heard Daenerys come closer. “I-I know we touched on this earlier, but I don’t know how soon I’ll be able to access my acco—”

“You know I work pro-bono, and we did discuss this, and I told you not to worry about it,” Daenerys said swiftly, as she crouched down behind Sansa to get a close-up of a bruise on the small of her back. “You know, I  _adore_ Jon. He’s the only family I have left, and I would kill for him. And he adores you, and, therefore, I adore you.” She paused. “Besides, I know your own family isn’t here right now, so you need people on your side.”

Sansa swallowed, thinking of Mom, thinking of her brothers and sister, feeling her jaw tremble and her eyes burn.

“I don’t want to tell them yet. I don’t think I can. I know I  _should,_ but I’m so—” she halted abruptly, unable to finish her sentence. Daenerys was snapping more pictures.

“You don’t owe anyone anything.”  _Snap._ “If it makes you happier to tell them, then tell them. If it makes you happier to not tell them, then don’t tell them.”  _Snap._ “You need to do what makes you happy and what is best for you  _first._ You need to be more comfortable with not pleasing everyone.”

“You don’t think it’s wrong to not tell them?”

“Not in the slightest.” Daenerys was in front of her again, focusing the camera on her collarbone. “It’s your business.”

“But you’re open about your past,” Sansa remarked, remembering all of the articles and interviews she had found online.

“Because it makes  _me_ happy to be open about my abusive marriage.” Daenerys finally looked up from the camera. “You really are  _so_ like Jon. It’s absurd. Putting everyone else before yourself,” she muttered. “Come on, let’s sit down and look through the pictures.”

They sat on the edge of the bed after Sansa put the hospital gown back on, as Daenerys scrolled through the images. They were grotesque; brutal; unbearably sad.

“So what happens next,” Daenerys began in a softer voice, “is that tomorrow we’ll contact your bank and start the process of separating your accounts. You’ll also need to arrange a place to stay. I can give you a list of shelters if you aren’t comfortable staying with me or Jon or anyone else that you know, but I really recommend you stay with one of us, at least until the fuss dies down and you have access to your accounts.”

She paused and fixed Sansa with a frank look. “I know you’ve been through hell, and I wish I could tell you that the worst is over, but this is an ugly process. You’re about to fight very hard.”

“I just want to cut off contact with him. I don’t even care about the house, or anything—”

“—You may not care  _now_ , but you will. He put you through torture and he deserves to pay for that,” Daenerys interrupted fiercely, her eyes blazing. “He’s going to bleed for it, bleed all of the money that you are owed, so that you can start a new life on your own terms, without being set back financially. We’re going to make him suffer as much as he deserves.”

Sansa stared at Daenerys in shock, but before she could reply, there was a soft knock on the door, and Daenerys’ eyes softened. “I think that’s our man,” she said, before sliding off the bed and going to the door.

**Jon**

His head was throbbing nearly as bad as his arm. It had taken hours to dismantle the bomb safely—hidden in Sansa’s bedroom—and thus he had spent hours in Sansa and Ramsay’s house. Ramsay had been taken in for questioning but had been released, likely slinking off to his own lawyer.

And so Jon had found himself immersed in this prison of pain, looking at the evidence of Sansa’s struggle with Ramsay. Two wine glasses were on the kitchen counter, one drained and one untouched, as well as a bottle of pills—Viagra, he read, and felt a clench of disgust so powerful he thought he could have killed Ramsay with his bare hands in that moment—and something had been burning in the hearth, judging by the smell of smoke filling the living room, and a lamp had been shattered. Smears of blood marked the floor around the shattered lamp. That had been hard to see, and he had only just barely kept his fury in check.

What was it about Sansa that made him feel her pain as if it were his own?

The bedroom was, however, the most painful to be in. Their bed was made, and as they moved throughout the room, gathering prints—collecting evidence of Hollard’s work—he had kept detecting the faintest hint of Sansa’s perfume, a floral scent he was beginning to get to know and beginning to crave, and he kept thinking of Ramsay sharing this bed with Sansa, touching her skin, and it made him sick. He had never hated someone so much.

Hollard had been taken to the hospital for his injuries, and was being questioned by Edd and Pypar while Noye and Grenn did analysis of his bomb and detonator.

And now, at last, nearly eleven o’clock at night, he finally could see Sansa.

He approached the room now, fighting a war within his own heart. He was desperate to see her, because there had been a few minutes earlier tonight where he had learned what it felt like to think he was about to lose her forever, and that feeling had been impossible, intolerable, the very worst pain. He needed to see her, needed to hear her voice—but at the same time he knew that this meeting would not be without pain.

She had been hiding so much from him, not knowing that he already knew, and now they would have to acknowledge her secret. Now Ramsay’s abuse was in the open between them, and that strange fairytale world they had briefly occupied—where they talked about books and ate dinner together and practiced self-defense—had been shattered forever. He was glad for it, as in spite of that fairytale world’s beauty it had been a shimmering mirage with all the sweetness of a dream and all the poison of a nightmare for him.

But Sansa might not feel that way. He did not know how she might feel. And he knew that there was a very good chance that Sansa would no longer wish to see him. He might remind her of the nightmare that she had just escaped; he might represent a powerful and painful shame that she wished to avoid. Whatever her wishes were he would have to heed them, no matter how much pain it gave him.

And so, as he raised his hand to knock on her door, he accepted that he was about to see the end of something or the beginning of something, and that whatever it might be was out of his control and not his choice, and he would have to accept whatever waited for him on the other side of this door.

Jon knocked on the door, and moments later, Daenerys opened it, her face luminous.

“I was right,” she said over her shoulder, as she stepped aside to let Jon in. Sansa was on the edge of the hospital bed, in a hospital gown, but he couldn’t bring himself to look at her yet.

Jon looked at Daenerys pointedly, and after a moment, she seemed to understand what he was asking. “You know, I’m going to go get a coffee,” she said suddenly. “I’ll be right back.”

And then, at last, they were alone, and finally Jon forced himself to look at her as he heard Sansa slide off the edge of the bed.

She was wearing a thin, light blue hospital gown that fluttered around her bruised, cut-up knees—she must have fallen on the shattered lamp in her living room—and gaped at her neck, showing her lovely but bruised collarbone. It was agony to see her pain; he was shattered by it.

**Sansa**

Jon was standing before her at last, a thick white bandage on his forehead, still wearing his bloodstained white shirt, and yet he had never looked more beautiful to her. Jon’s gaze flitted from her knees to her arms to her neck; abruptly his brows knit together in pain and he turned away hastily, covering his mouth. She cringed with shame, and searched wildly for her words, but of all the things she could have possibly said, she only managed to utter the most foolish, most pointless thing.

“I lost your book.”

Jon looked back sharply, nonplussed. “Ramsay burned it,” she explained, the words like ash in her mouth. “I’m really sorry—”

“Sansa, I don’t care about the book,” Jon said.

“But you loved that book; it was important to you—”

“—Not as much as you,” he scoffed. “Only you, Sansa, would apologize about a book,” he said in disbelief, shaking his head, rubbing at his bandage.

Did he mean that he did not love the book as much as he loved her? Or did he mean merely that the book was not as important to him as she was? They were not the same thing; they meant vastly different things, had dramatically different implications.

They were quiet. Neither knew what to say. Jon was looking at the floor, clenching his fists.

“Why were you outside of my house tonight?” she finally asked, crossing her arms over her chest, self-conscious in her filmy hospital gown—particularly with Jon so near.

“I don’t know.” Jon turned away, pacing. “I still don’t know what I planned on doing,” he admitted, anguished.

“Ramsay said he met you tonight.”

“He did. He followed me to the bar I was at, and taunted me about you. So I followed him back to your house, and Hollard was there.”

She studied his back, which was tense, the once-crisp white cotton smudged with dirt from the road and stained with blood.

“I guess now you know the truth. About me and Ramsay.” She thought she might cry again.

“I already knew.”

She couldn’t breathe.

“Why—how—”

“—I knew before you even came into the room on the day of the bomb scare,” Jon said, turning to face her at last. “Mormont realized, and told me.”

It was too painful to contemplate, that he had known the whole time. Was that why he had been kind to her? The idea that everything—the kindness, the friendship, the  _kiss_ —had been out of pity—was unbearable. Her eyes were burning again, her bruises throbbing with the fast beat of her heart.

“So that’s why you were so kind,” she said miserably, reeling with sadness and embarrassment. She had been so happy; she had been, for the first time in her life,  _in love._ “Because you pitied me—”

“—No. That’s not why at all,” Jon said immediately. Sansa looked down, the tile design blurring and turning silver through her tears. She heard Jon step closer, and she looked up hastily in surprise. His eyes were so soft, his brow furrowed in sadness as he gazed at her.

He was giving her  _that_ look again. “I’ve been in love with you for as long as I can remember. I might have been unkind, or distant, or bitter, but my feelings about you are the same now as they’ve always been.” He looked away, swallowing, biting his lip.

She wanted to kiss him, wanted to touch him, wanted to show him how she felt, but she couldn’t seem to move. “It had nothing to do with pity,” he added quietly. "I pity Hollard; I pity Ramsay. They're not worth my empathy, only my pity."

Everything was different, now.

“So you don’t think less of me?” She watched him look back at her with that warmth, a warmth that washed over her and healed her, even the parts of her that she had not known were broken.

“ _Less_?” he breathed. “How could I possibly think less of you?”

She was no longer cold. In fact, now she was far too warm, and she had never been more aware of the heat of her own blood, and even now, bruised and bloodied and wearing an ugly hospital gown, she had never felt more beautiful, and had never felt more in love.

“When you kissed me,” she began quietly, “I felt—I felt so strong. That was when I decided to leave. I was going to leave, tonight, and tell you—and then Ramsay came, so I was stopped. But you made me strong.”

“You  _are_ strong."

Her heart was pounding so hard she felt her body shake with it, her stomach clenching with nerves. She knew what she wanted but she was so afraid to ask for it. And yet..the way Jon was looking at her...the fear seemed to fade, leaving only that perfect warmth in its place. She could do this. She could seek out her own happiness. None of the pain, fear, or shame seemed to matter. It would all eventually fade, too, and there would still be this warmth, this line of electricity between their souls, as there had always been.

“Well, I think you should kiss me again.” She did not look away from his eyes even though she was tempted to, out of shyness. She had never asked to be kissed before. “It just seems to lead to good things. And I’ll need strength for what’s to come.”

His lips twitched with the hint of a smile as he gazed at her freely, gazed at her the way he had never allowed himself to gaze at her before.

His hand was on her cheek, the gentlest touch, and she closed her eyes as he pressed his lips to hers in a soft kiss, the softest kiss that still betrayed more than twenty years of love, an endless passion only just barely contained beneath its surface. And she fisted her hands in his shirt, and kissed him back.

“Unbelievable! The coffee in this hospital is all Keurig—oh,  _crap._ Sorry.” The door opened and closed rapidly, and they pulled apart at last, flushed and breathless. Jon took his hand from her cheek, and his fingers found hers, twining together.

And then he kissed her again, more deeply this time, with all of the painful longing that had gone unexpressed for so many years. Her bruises, her mistakes, and her pain could not touch them; he loved the part of her that was constant. All of this time he had seen her, he had loved her, even when she had not thought anyone ever would love her again. He had loved her at her worst, he had loved her at her best. This man who so touched her soul as only music and art could loved her and always had, and he would be there while she rebuilt her life, rebuilt it in precisely the way she wanted to build her life: out of beauty, love, and art. 


	7. Chapter Seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This thing kept growing and growing, and developed its own plot. I managed to slim it down as much as I could, but it's still kind of long, and is no longer an epilogue. Maybe I'll post an actual epilogue, but we'll see. 
> 
> Thanks to everyone for reading this story and for all of your kudos and kind comments. I hope you all like this final chapter! 
> 
> Also, warning for smut, because that's how I roll.

  _“You pierce my soul. I am half-agony, half-hope.” – Jane Austen_

_“It was at this point that Bilbo stopped. Going on from there was the bravest thing he ever did. The tremendous things that happened afterward were as nothing compared to it. He fought the real battle in the tunnel alone, before he ever saw the vast danger that lay in wait.” – J. R. R. Tolkien_

**One Week Later**

In the overly decorated dining room of Olenna Tyrell’s townhouse, Sansa had spread out the ruins of her life with Ramsay before her. Beside Sansa, Daenerys and Olenna stared down at the photographs of bruises, the bank records, and the hospital records.

“It’s not enough,” said Olenna bluntly.

She gestured to the stacks of evidence with a wrinkled, manicured hand, an emerald and diamond ring glinting in the light. “You have nothing. This is the least compelling case I have ever seen.”

“First of all, how _dare_ you,” began Daenerys furiously, earning arched brows from Olenna, “and second of all, I know. That’s why I’m here.”

There was an edge to her voice and she wouldn’t look at Olenna. Sansa was beginning to recognize the signs of Daenerys’ temper rising, and now seemed to be one of those moments. Olenna, however, seemed supremely indifferent to Daenerys’ volatility.

“I know you do so hate to ask politely for things,” Olenna sympathized, earning a sharp look from Daenerys.

“But how could it possibly not be enough?” Sansa asked desperately, staring down at the mess before them.

She had done so much reading on the subject—she had scoured every corner of the Internet for advice, and had taken off from work the last few days to collect as much evidence as she could. She had amassed an entire dining room table’s worth of evidence.

Olenna snorted and picked up a picture of an old bruise on her collarbone, one of the pictures that Daenerys had taken in the hospital.

“We don’t have proof that _he_ did _this_ to you.” She dropped the photograph in disdain, and it fluttered back onto the table. “None of these mean anything without context. The best you can hope for is divorce—and even that will be a challenge.”

“I know,” Daenerys groaned, dropping into one of the carved dining chairs. “He’s going to run, I just know it.”

Sansa felt Olenna touch her arm with a brisk pat.

“The really evil ones like to run, you see, so that you can’t serve them the divorce papers,” she explained dispassionately.

Sansa felt sick to think of it, but she was not surprised. She had had nightmares of it already: of being Sansa Bolton forever. It would be just the sort of thing that Ramsay would do, to deny her a divorce forever, dangling what she wanted just out of reach, forever saddling himself to her.

“He’s a squeaky-clean tech genius,” Daenerys seethed. “A handsome, well-off, privileged white male. He thinks he’s going to get away with this, but he is not—“

“Oh, good—another speech. It’s been at least thirty seconds,” Olenna said, rolling her eyes. “Come with me, Sansa, and let’s go fetch a glass of wine or ten. I promise you that she will still be ranting when we get back, and she typically requires no response to her little tirades.”

Sansa followed Olenna into the kitchen as they heard Daenerys get up and begin pacing, knocking over a chair furiously.

In spite of their rude treatment of each other, Daenerys and Olenna seemed to be extremely close—close enough that Olenna, who had trained Daenerys at the beginning of her law career, had been the first person Daenerys had called when looking for a safe place for Sansa to stay.

And, to Sansa’s unending gratitude, Olenna had crisply informed them that she had several unused guest rooms in her townhome and would be delighted to have Sansa stay, so long as she did not host any wild parties, and promised to clean the attached bathroom regularly. Olenna was also related to Sansa’s boss, Willas, and her coworker Margaery, and Olenna had promised that neither would ever know a word of this.

Every time she thought of Olenna’s generosity, as she was now, she felt her eyes burn with tears, but Olenna seemed extremely hassled by displays of emotion, so she blinked them back carefully as they entered the glamorous kitchen.

The kitchen had recently been featured in an interior design magazine—Olenna was a Tyrell, after all—and was as overly decorated as the dining room, with roses cut from Olenna’s own garden on every surface. On the first day that Sansa had come to stay with Olenna, she had offered to help her with her garden in return for her generosity, but the older woman had snorted dismissively.

“Oh, that’s Renly’s domain,” she had informed Sansa on that sunny morning, leading her to the windows to look out at the lush rose garden behind the townhome.

And to Sansa’s shock, the actor Renly Baratheon—whom she had seen in a preview with Olenna’s grandson Loras when she had seen _Florian and Jonquil_ with Jon—was standing among the roses, perfect body shiny with sweat and wearing very small shorts.

Sansa had gasped, and Olenna had laughed. “For some reason, he thought I would be upset about my grandson dating a man, and insisted on coming here and ‘helping’ me every weekend, to curry favor with me. What an idiot—even the dog knew Loras preferred men by the time Loras was nine. To think I didn’t know my own grandson was gay. But I let him garden anyway,” she added with an innocent cock of her head. “I’m no fool, Sansa. Free labor is still free labor, even when done by an idiot.”

Now, Sansa touched a luscious pink and orange rose, trying not to laugh as she thought of Renly sweating in the sun, and listened to Olenna uncork a bottle of rosé.

“So what would be definitive evidence? Does such a thing even exist?” 

“Short of a photograph of him in the middle of beating you, no.” Olenna handed her a glass of wine, but Sansa almost dropped it in shock.

“Oh my god.”

She set down the glass and looked at Olenna. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before—but the NW might have pictures.”

Olenna was staring at her now, all signs of sarcasm gone. Sansa’s heart was pounding. “They showed up, just as I was coming out of the house. I-it’s a stretch, I know, but—“

“—No, it’s not. It’s excellent. Can your man look into it?”

Sansa flushed at the wording and took an impulsive swig of her wine, if only for the excuse to look away.

_Your man._

She hadn’t seen Jon since Sunday night—he had been working round the clock, first on questioning Hollard, and then flying up to Maidenpool for another case he had been working on for months. He was supposed to come back tomorrow morning for more questioning of Hollard, as apparently the case was becoming more complex than they had initially realized.

Each night he would call her, briefly, for however long he could get away, and apologize profusely that he could not tell her more about it just yet. Each night she would lie awake in the guest bed, listening to his voice, slightly rough from a profound lack of sleep, and hold the mobile to her ear and pretend he was next to her, just for those few minutes.

Meanwhile, she’d not had any contact with Ramsay. He had been questioned by the police, but that questioning had only done her harm in the long run. The police report was absurd. Just seeing it had made her hands shake with anger.

_Mr. Bolton reported that his wife attacked him when he questioned her about extramarital sexual activity with another man._

On the night she had left Ramsay, she had stayed at Jon’s apartment, but he had insisted that she take his bed and that he sleep on his couch. Nothing had happened, and though she knew it was the right thing for them, she now almost wished they had simply given into the desire that night—since apparently she was going to suffer for it anyway.

Even though she missed Jon desperately, she was glad he had not been around throughout the last few days. She was glad he was not around to see the photographs of her bruises, to see her bank statements and to hear her recount over a year of abuse to Olenna and Daenerys in painstaking detail.

“He should be back tomorrow,” she finally said, toying with her wine glass. “I’ll ask him.”

“Good—“ There was a loud crash, and Olenna brushed past Sansa, muttering. “—Oh, for god’s sake. How many times do I have to tell her to stay away from the china? Daenerys Targaryen: Breaker of Plates. She’s like a tiny, enraged dinosaur, wreaking destruction wherever she goes,” she complained, hastening to the dining room to stop further demolition of her fine china.

Hours later, eyes itching with exhaustion, Sansa went up to the little room she now called home, and fell facedown onto the floral-print bedspread. It was nearly midnight.

She checked her mobile. No call or text from Jon, yet, and she was trying to avoid contacting him first.

She didn’t want to overwhelm him.

But she _really_ missed him.

She set her mobile aside, and curled onto her side on the bed. The little bedroom was already beginning to feel like more of a home than her home with Ramsay ever had.

In spite of Olenna’s overwhelmingly floral decorating, Sansa had put her own touch on the room: she had a stack of her favorite books on the nightstand, and a candle that she loved; and she had stuck the copies of the pictures she had given to Jon in the frame of the mirror over the dresser. Even though her feelings about her family were becoming increasingly complicated with each passing day as she continued to accept that she _was,_ in fact, angry, it still comforted her to see the pictures.

Daenerys and her personal trainer, an outrageously handsome man named Daario, had accompanied Sansa to her home earlier in the week to pick up clothing and other belongings, and that was when she had gotten the pictures. Daenerys had insisted on bringing Daario in case of a confrontation with Ramsay. But, as Sansa had suspected, Ramsay had not been at home—nor had he changed the locks, or harmed any of her belongings.

He was too smart to lose the game now.

He was too smart to let his viciousness show through now.

She lay there, curled up and trying not to think about how much she hated Ramsay—but then her mobile began to vibrate on the bed next to her head, and Jon’s number came up on her screen, and she felt a burst of joy as she answered it.

“Hello?”

“It’s not too late, is it? Dany just texted me and said she’d only just left,” Jon asked immediately. It sounded like he was outside; his words were partly lost to wind.

“It’s not too late at all.” She bit back a smile as warmth washed over her at the sound of his voice. “Are you still coming back tomorrow morning?”

“Yeah, but I’ll probably be back here next week.” He sounded exhausted, and she pictured him lying next to her on the bed, telling her about his day. _Once this is all over,_ she promised herself, as she had many times throughout the last week. She did not want to pollute the beginning of whatever this was between them with the nastiness of separating from Ramsay, and yet she was so eager to begin rebuilding her life—a life with Jon in it.

But she couldn’t build her new life if she didn’t tear down the remnants of her old one. She had to push through this, to get to what was waiting for her on the other side.

She needed, she knew, to see if the NW had taken any pictures of her and Ramsay.

“This is a bit random, but who was that agent who had the pinned sleeve? The one who showed up first, and took the detonator from you?”

Everything was a blur from that night, but she still vividly recalled jolting in shock when she had realized the man was missing an arm. If there were anyone who might have any images, it would be him, as he’d been the first to arrive.

“Oh, Donal Noye. One of the bomb specialists,” Jon said. “Why?”

“Are you close with him?” she redirected.

“Yeah, he’s been yelling at me longer than even Mormont,” Jon said dryly. “He called me a bully when I first started because I kept trying to show off. Why?” he pressed.

“I just was curious.” She didn’t know why she didn’t want to explain it to Jon. Maybe it was because she wanted to do this herself.

“Do you—“

“—I was thinking—“

“—Oh, sorry,” she said hastily, even as she heard him apologize too. “No, you go.”

“I was thinking, maybe we could do something this weekend—if you want,” he added quickly. “Nothing—well, not like a date or anything. I know you want to put that on hold, and of course I respect it. I just thought maybe, if you wanted, we could—I don’t know—see a movie, or…well, it doesn’t matter, really.”

“I’d love that,” she said softly. There it was again: that feeling of warmth.

They talked for a little bit—only meaningless things, like how Daenerys had broken Olenna’s plates (apparently she had a bit of a reputation for this, and had “trimmed” down Jon’s collection of plateware as well), or how Jon’s colleague Sam had missed his flight to Maidenpool because he’d been up all night caring for his son.

But she could hear the exhaustion in his voice, and her own eyelids were growing heavy, and she knew she had to say good night.

“I can’t wait to see you,” she confessed, impulsively, as they prepared to hang up.

“Me too,” Jon said after a moment, his voice rough. “Go to sleep. I’ll text you when I land in King’s Landing.”

He rung off, and Sansa dreamily buried her face in the pillow, and daydreamed, as swooningly as she had once done as a teenager, about her future.

Someday soon, she would have her own apartment, and she would invite Daenerys and Olenna and Jon’s friends from the NW for dinner (and maybe give Daenerys paper plates only), and then, after they all left, she would make out with Jon on every surface, and then they would have wild sex—maybe he might even do what she had walked in on him doing to Ygritte all those years ago—and then lay together afterward and talk about books.

And he’d take her to hockey games, and she would take him to museums, and Ramsay would be a distant memory. And maybe she might even be talking to Arya again by that time, and maybe she and Jon would visit Arya or Robb together—she giddily pictured babysitting Ned and Joanna with Jon—and maybe they would even fly up north—or better yet, drive up together and therefore have more time together—and visit Mom and Bran and Rickon…

Her propensity for daydreaming was what had earned her so much scorn throughout her life, and yet, as she lay in this unfamiliar bed, surrounded by love and pain and hopelessness and determination, she thought that perhaps it was the very reason she was still fighting. It was her will to be happy, her will to be loved, to have a life of beauty and romance, that had driven her to break free from Ramsay, and it was that same will that was keeping her going now—and the same will that was keeping her from leaning too much on Jon. It was, above all, her imagination that was keeping her afloat, and it always had been—her ability to imagine a better life.

She was lucky. She suddenly understood just how lucky she truly was. She could re-craft her story as many times as she needed to, because she could always envision what the ending should look like. She could always see the final plot twist, could always see how things would right themselves in the end. She could always find the lines of beauty and romance in her life, and how they might finally intertwine.

She had grown up wandering through other people’s stories, meandering through time and magic, and it had taught her how to write her own story.

She quite suddenly sat up, wide-awake, and got her laptop from the nightstand, and opened a new email.

Arya belonged in her story. She loved Arya, and she knew that she could do the thing that Arya could not do: she could extend the olive branch, she could extend her love, and she could recover from being hurt.

_To: Arya Stark_

_1:12AM_

_Subject: I miss you._

_I know it’s been a long time. I know we had a bad fight. I really miss you, though, and I think about you all the time._

_Can we talk?_

_Love,_

_Sansa_  

She hit ‘send’ and closed her laptop with slightly shaking hands.

She had done it.

She was still angry, still hurt, and she was certain that Arya was too—but she was beginning to understand just how impermanent anger and hurt really were, and how love so often was hidden beneath all of the pain. Just one week ago Jon had kissed her with a lifetime of love that had been so carefully hidden behind a wall of contempt, which he had so carefully constructed from his pain. If only they had been brave enough to pull aside the pain and see past the hurt…

She got up and changed into pajamas, and brushed her teeth and washed her face, then turned out the light, casting the room in darkness. The sounds of the city were dulled; the townhome was in a quieter neighborhood, and she could almost pretend that she was back home in Winterfell, where the loudest sounds were the wind through the trees.

 _And maybe someday Jon and I will go back to Winterfell and make it our home._ It was just one of many possible happy endings that she was beginning to craft for herself.

She crawled into bed, settling against the pillows, and heard her mobile vibrate once with a new email.

_From: Arya Stark_

_1:23AM_

_Subject: Re: I miss you._

_gendry is totally laughing at me for crying right now. i miss you too and also 100% hate you for waking me up and making me cry like a baby the night before i have a big presentation so THANKS for that, hope you feel proud of yourself because i haven’t cried in like 2 years. yes lets talk._

_love arya_

Sansa promptly burst into tears.

**Jon**

“There you are!”

Jon turned at the voice, blinking to try and wake himself up as he walked through the halls of the NW. Val was steaming towards him, looking outraged. “I figured it out,” she informed him furiously, grabbing him by his tie. “This isn’t tied right, by the way,” she added, letting him go as they fell into step together.

“ _Hi,_ Val,” he said dryly, looking down at his tie. He had changed in the airport bathroom after a frantic flight down from Maidenpool, which he had almost missed by mere seconds because he had slept through his alarm. He had been awake for days.

“Hi. Listen, I think I figured out how Bolton knew where you were going to be last week,” she said, and Jon stopped in his tracks. “We had a data breach on Thursday night, the night before we all went to Lommy’s.”

She set her hands on her hips, looking smug. “Marsh was complaining about the breach, and I happened to be looking through my inbox at that moment, at that email chain from Pyp and Grenn about Lommy’s, and that’s when I figured it out.”

Jon stared at her. It made perfect sense, of course, but the idea of it made his skin crawl. Of course Ramsay would do such a thing, of course he would delight in hacking the NW. It would just be further proof, in his eyes, of his own superiority.

And yet—

\--It could just be the thing to bring him down, if they could sufficiently prove it was him. He’d have to text Sansa about this.

“Thank you,” he said, and Val scoffed.

“I didn’t do it for you. But you’re welcome anyway,” she said coolly. “Good luck today.” She nodded to the last door in the hallway, Observation L302.

“Thanks.”

He turned back to face the doorway as he heard Val walk back to her own office, and tried to prepare himself. The door opened, and Mormont came out, looking weary and slightly greasy.

“Better late than never,” the older man said wryly. “Your tie’s tied wrong. Better fix yourself up before you go in.” He took Jon’s folder and notebook from him so Jon could quickly re-tie his tie. “The man’s a snake; Grenn had no luck with him. But I guess you knew that and planned for that.”

This was the thing he had been both dreading and looking forward to for days; this was the thing he had spent every waking moment preparing for when he wasn’t working on the Mooton case.

It was the only reason he had been glad to be away from Sansa all week, as he had been able to do his research without risk of her finding out. “That’s better,” Mormont said when Jon had fixed his tie, and he handed Jon back his things as they walked through the door.

The observation room was dark; only a few agents were there, most of them younger, poised with pens and notebooks, ready to take notes on how he handled the snake in the grass that Sam and Pypar had found, who was waiting in the fluorescent lighting on the other side of the glass.

For a moment, Jon stood in the dark, staring at the evil waiting for him.

It had taken so much work to get to this point.

Jon had _known_ that Hollard had not thought to put a bomb in Sansa’s home on his own, and he had _known_ that every new motive that Hollard gave had been a lie, but even after extensive questioning he hadn’t been able to get him to crack. He had had no evidence—or even any leads. It had merely been a hunch—one of his hunches that seemed to come from nowhere, but really, he knew, came from the very same part of himself that made him struggle so much with the people that he loved.

His eyes saw too much and it would make his imagination run wild, anticipating and understanding, until he knew the other person’s intentions and feelings better than they themselves did. He had always been able to read people, to see beyond what was in front of him.

But hunches were nothing without evidence, and he had been at a loss.

Then, Pypar had found security camera footage of Hollard making two separate calls from a payphone on the same day from perhaps the only payphone left in King’s Landing.

And Sam had traced those calls to one man.

From there, Jon had taken the lead, researching and mining late into the night. He would not have been able to sleep even if he had wanted to; he was powerless to help Sansa and it was killing him—knowing what she was enduring as she prepared for her court case, knowing she was ripping open all of her wounds and putting them on display for the world to pick apart—but this, at least, he could do.

“Watch and learn from a master,” Mormont told the new agents, as Jon smoothed his hair one last time, steeling himself for what he was about to do.

He walked into the room, the overhead light buzzing. A Puck-like man in a three-piece suit, looking a little worse for wear for having been in custody for so many hours, was sitting at the table smirking at him. He had the relaxed, magnanimous air of a man on vacation in a vineyard. Few men could be so calm in this room. It was just another sign of how foul he really was.

“Jon Snow. Look how you’ve grown. I remember when you weren’t even five,” Petyr Baelish observed in that cool, drawling voice, barely above a whisper, as Jon set his notebook down on the table.

“I don’t remember you,” Jon said plainly as he sat down. “I remembered the name, eventually, but not the face.”

This was a lie. He had always found Petyr Baelish sickening, though he had only seen him a few times, and the last time had been at Robb’s wedding.

Baelish smiled, his swarthy eyes glimmering.

“You look like your mother.”

“I get that a lot,” Jon dismissed, though it always pained him to hear that. _Just another pretty young girl you probably thought yourself entitled to,_ he thought with disgust. His mother had died when she was nineteen; Baelish seemed to be something of a connoisseur of pretty, barely-legal girls.

He stared at Baelish across the table. Baelish stared back, unabashed, a smirk playing about his lips. He was another psychopath, though perhaps a different brand than Ramsay. It was not blood or bruises that he wanted, but he was just as violent.

Jon settled back into his chair, his face smooth of expression—he had done this so many times—even as his heart was pounding in his anger.

He had noticed Baelish’s gaze lingering on Sansa’s bare shoulders at Robb’s wedding, had noticed how Baelish had looked upon Ned with such profound dislike, how Baelish had so loved to lean into Catelyn Stark’s ear, and whisper all sorts of things into her lovely ear.

“I had assumed you brought me here to talk,” Baelish remarked slyly, “though I have been told I’m a handsome fellow, so I can hardly blame you for staring.”

Jon smiled back at Baelish, watched the man’s eyes glitter as they perceived this unexpected reaction. He watched Baelish try to think on his feet. The man was infamous at it—he was one of the most successful entrepreneurs of King’s Landing—but it would not be enough this time. “I’ve been told,” Baelish began, “that Mr. Hollard made two calls to me last Friday, but as I have assured your colleagues, I did not accept these calls, as I did not recognize the number.”

“The phone records state that you did, in fact, accept them, so that statement is false, but that isn’t what I want to talk about,” Jon said dispassionately.

Grenn had “accidentally” led Baelish to believe he had gotten away with this earlier, per Jon’s instructions as he ran through the Maidenpool airport to his gate. _We see that you received two calls from Hollard last Friday; can you tell us about those?_ Grenn had asked, and when Baelish had lied and said he had not accepted the calls, Grenn had moved on, letting Baelish think he was in the clear.

“Oh? Then what did you want to talk about, Snow?” He was smiling again, but Jon was no longer smiling.

“There’s a game,” he began, “a game called Dog Hunt. You can’t get it easily. You have to know where to find it on the dark web.”

“I must confess, I know nothing about games. Is it a computer game?”

“You know about this game, I think, because its development was funded by venture capital from a company called Littlefinger Incorporated. There are no other companies registered under this name; it is your company.”

“I’ve invested in many things. It gets hard to keep track of them all.”

“But you remember this investment, because you deeply regret this investment.”

“Do I? I had no idea!” Baelish laughed.

“You do, because Dog Hunt was developed by Ramsay Bolton, and you had no idea of how much of a menace he would turn out to be when you first invested. Of course, you know Ramsay Bolton well by now.”

He had to be careful with his wording.

“I don’t know Ramsay Bolton—“

Caught.

“—You invited Ramsay Bolton to your housewarming party, four years ago, in the summer of two thousand fourteen, so that statement is also false.” Jon opened his folder, and held up the pictures that he had found on Facebook, through many late hours of exhaustive searching.

The first was a picture of Baelish and Ramsay, posed with a number of other tech moguls, standing on a rooftop deck beneath string lights, a few startlingly pretty girls among them, all of them holding glasses of wine. And there, off to the side, was Sansa, next to Baelish. He could just barely see Baelish’s hand on her waist in the picture, touching her just an inch higher than was appropriate for a family friend.

“I invited so many to that party…as it was an open house,” Baelish said dryly. “You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t remember every single person that walked through the door.”

“But you would remember Ramsay anyway,” Jon continued, undaunted, as he held up the next picture, “because Catelyn Stark had asked you to keep an eye on her daughter, and you had invited Catelyn Stark’s daughter—her beautiful daughter, who looks just like her—to your party…and Ramsay Bolton hit it off with her immediately.”

The next picture had been taken from Ramsay’s Instagram account, one of the very first pictures on the account. It was a picture of him and Sansa, candid and heavily filtered, both of them laughing.

Robb had unwittingly confirmed the rest of it over the phone. _Oh, that creep. Ugh. Yeah, Mom asked him to keep an eye on Sansa when she first moved to King’s Landing. I don’t know how she doesn’t see just how gross he is,_ Robb had said. _Have you seen Sansa again, by the way?_

Jon had changed the subject. He doubted that Robb had bought it; most people assumed that Robb was too blunt, too straightforward, to pick up on subtleties and lies, but Jon knew better, and knew that Robb’s naïveté was, so often, a bluff. When they had been teens, Jon had foolishly thought himself cleverer than Robb, but time had taught him differently.

“She is a beautiful girl,” Baelish agreed, studying the picture. “You’re right, she does look a bit like Catelyn. I remember you always seemed to spend a lot of time looking at Catelyn Stark’s daughter,” Baelish added.

“I did, and I still do,” Jon admitted, watching with relish as Baelish’s eyes darkened so briefly. “But Bolton made a mistake that night: he taunted you, with how easily he had stolen Sansa Stark from you. You had just agreed to invest in his latest venture, but you withdrew the capital after that night. No one crosses you, after all.”

This had been the hardest piece of all to obtain, and it was very shaky evidence indeed. Jon slid forward a document from Ramsay’s Dreadfort, Inc financial profile. Littlefinger, Inc had been an investor, very briefly, in Dreadfort in 2014, before pulling out—only to later invest again.

Baelish’s eyes flicked to the document, then back to Jon again. He was still smiling.

“I trimmed down, went a bit lean that year, if I recall,” he admitted slowly.

He knew this was it—he knew he was on the right track.

Now it was all down to what he did next.

**Sansa**

Donal Noye, according to the Internet, did not exist.

He had no public records, no social media accounts—there was no trace of him. She searched for hours and came up with nothing. She only had one possible route left before she asked Jon—and she really, really didn’t want to ask Jon.

Samwell Tarly had a vibrant Twitter account where he mostly Tweeted links to information security articles, Dungeons and Dragons memes, and pictures of his wife and son. And now, thanks to him, Sansa had created her own Twitter account with a fake name—@alaynestone—to get in touch with him through direct messaging.

@alaynestone: Hi, this is Sansa Stark (you know me through Jon.).

His reply was almost immediate.

@samwisetarlee: Hello Sansa Stark! I love Jon!

@alaynestone: Hello! He’s great!

She found herself laughing as she typed.

@alaynestone: I love him too! Can you help me get in touch with Donal Noye?

An hour later saw her in a cab on her way to the NW headquarters on the outskirts of King’s Landing, gripping her purse in sweaty palms. Sam had come through immediately, utterly delighted to help.

 _Don’t get your hopes up,_ she told herself fiercely, as they passed a long line of sloppy pines, faded in the summer sun. Up ahead she saw a security gate—and beyond that, a grim, nondescript building. It was the NW headquarters.

She got out of the cab at the security gate and paid with her new debit card (thankfully, two days prior had been pay day and her paycheck was now deposited in a new account), and looked around, blinking in the sunlight, as the cab drove off.

A heavy-set man with his sleeve pinned up was leaning against the gate, talking to the guard there, but he paused and nodded to Sansa. It was Donal Noye, the man who had been the first to arrive at her house the night she had left Ramsay.

He did not look like a man who suffered fools, and in spite of his weight, he looked _strong_. She drew in a steeling breath. She could not seem weak or nervous or shy; she had the feeling that would only irritate him.

“Hi, Mr. Noye,” she greeted, holding out her hand and shaking his hand firmly. “Sansa Stark. Thank you for meeting me.”

“I don’t know if I’ll have much for you,” he warned as the gate rolled aside. He nodded to the guard before they passed through, and then were walking up the hot drive toward the NW building.

Somewhere in there was Jon, and she felt a little thrill rush through her but she pushed it down. Now was not the time to be swooning over him. “I was looking through the pictures we took,” he said as he held the door open for her, “and there’s some there, but I don’t know how much it’ll add.”

“Well, every bit helps,” she said as she followed him inside.

There was an exhaustive security process, and all the while she wondered if she would run into Jon. A small part of her wanted to, but mostly she didn’t want him to know she had been here. She wanted to do this for herself—and besides, it was so unlikely that anything might come of it, and then she would feel foolish for having tried.

Nearly twenty minutes later she was following Noye to a bank of grim elevators, and they took the elevators down to far below the ground floor. She considered making a joke about him not liking sunlight, but he didn’t seem like the type who would be amused by that, so she kept her mouth shut as she followed him to a sprawling lab.

A thick-necked man in a white button-up and lab goggles was inside, crouched over a workbench, scowling as he handled tiny parts with gloved hands. He glanced up when they entered and watched her curiously, but looked back to his work hastily when Noye looked pointedly at him.

“Alright, here we are.” They reached a desk at the very back of the lab, piled high with papers and old dismantled electronics. “Take a seat, and we’ll see what we see.”

**Jon**

“What made you go ‘a bit lean that year’?”

“Oh, the stock market, personal expenses—a new mortgage,” Baelish said with a wave of his hand.

“Yet you invested in Dreadfort a year later. Was two thousand fifteen a better year?”

“Must have been, given the evidence.”

There it was. He saw it: a flash of frustration.

“You invested a lot in Dreadfort that year.” He turned over to the next page of the financial records. “And the year after that, too.” He turned the next page. “For a man who does not play games, you’ve given significant capital to a man known for his games. In fact, you’re his biggest investor—by far.”

The room was silent. They were staring at each other. Baelish was still smiling, and Jon’s heart was still pounding. “You’re his biggest investor…yet you say you don’t know him.”

He waited. He watched carefully. He hoped Baelish was afraid.

Baelish said nothing, so he stepped forward and effectively sank the blade in. “Why would Hollard be making calls from a payphone to _you_ just before attempting to bomb Ramsay Bolton’s house?”

“Because I fired Dontos Hollard for repeatedly showing up to work drunk,” Baelish drawled, “and Hollard could not recover from the shame of it. He threatened me, the day I fired him, and did not leave me alone from that point forward,” said Baelish carelessly. “He was mentally unstable, as proven by his bombing attempts, and was obsessed with me. I cannot say why he’d bomb Bolton’s house, but that is why he would be calling me.”

“Or he was trying to back out from his agreement with you after realizing that Sansa Stark lived in that house.”

It was only a guess, and there was so little evidence to prove it. It was a guess, and he did not know _why_ Hollard would refuse to harm Sansa, but he knew it was the truth. He now saw that his brawl with Hollard had likely been pointless; Hollard would not have detonated the bomb so long as Sansa was inside.

Baelish’s smile only widened.

“A good story, Snow,” he observed slowly. “Exciting. Fanciful. And, unfortunately, not based on fact.”

**Sansa**

Noye scrolled through the photographs taken.

“I took most of these, when I was collecting evidence,” he explained as they zipped past an image of the shattered lamp and the bloody smears on the floor. Her stomach clenched at sight of it. They scrolled past more in the bedroom, but there was nothing. She tried to hide how crushing it was, but she knew her face would give everything away.

She looked down at her hands. “I can’t give these to you, since the investigation is ongoing, but if you bring your lawyer in here, maybe we can figure something out,” Noye said finally. “But I don’t know how helpful they’ll be.”

“C-can I just look through them one more time?”

She was being so ridiculous, and she knew it. It had been a stupid idea anyway; as if having a picture of them both emerging from the house would support anything at all. If anything, it could only damn her further. Ramsay would twist it to support his narrative.

Noye scrolled through them again. There was the entryway with the bowl where she always dropped her keys— “Wait.”

The picture was dark, but the smear of blood—where she had hit her head when Ramsay had tackled her—was just visible.

The shattered lamp, she knew, would not be compelling on its own: the blood could be explained by the shards from the lamp. But this—a single smear of blood in the middle of the floor—could not be so easily explained away. Its singularity was what made it so terrible, so ominous.

And, combined with the other pictures—the shattered lamp, the wine, the bottle of Viagra—this picture told a story. They told the story of that night, and with just a few more supporting pieces of evidence, that story would be hard to ignore. “I think I could use _all_ of them, actually,” she realized.

**Jon**

“Fact has little meaning for you,” he observed, “as you’ve already lied in this interview.”

Baelish smiled.

“And so have you.” He leaned forward. “I admit that I did take a very careful look at my investments. And I admit that that it’s intriguing that I am connected to Dontos Hollard, Sansa Bolton, _and_ Ramsay Bolton so closely—but you’ll find I am connected to many people in this city in such a way.” He bared his teeth in a slow smile. “I would bet that there’s not a single person in this city that I’m not somehow connected to, in some way or another.”

Time to wrap things up. He had gotten what he needed.

“Did you ask Dontos Hollard to bomb Ramsay Bolton’s house?”

His words rang out in the room.

“No.”

Baelish’s mustache twitched as he sat back in his seat, and Jon closed his folder.

“Thank you for your time,” he said. “This was informative. I want to remind you that making false statements to the NW is against the law, and you have made two confirmed false statements today.”

He got to his feet and looked down at Baelish. “I hope you did not make any other statements today that prove to be false.”

He left Baelish sitting there in the grim light, and returned to the observation room. Mormont was chuckling and shaking his head.

"Your favorite move--trapping them in a lie," he mused. The younger agents were all writing furiously, and Jon felt a little embarrassed. "And what was the point of doing that?" he then asked the group at large. They were now staring at Jon, and one woman raised her hand.

"We don't have enough evidence yet, but this traps him while we look," she said eagerly.

"Yes, and you can only do this if you've done the necessary legwork beforehand and already have the answer. This gives you a chance to get the man in custody before he can slip away while you finish making the case files more robust," Mormont explained patiently. "But it’s an enormous risk and most often does not work. In other words, don't do this."

He shot Jon a look, which Jon ignored. 

"How did you know Baelish would lie about his affiliation with Bolton?" one of the agents asked now.

"I had an unfair advantage in that I already knew him," Jon admitted, "but I had a long list of possible lies ready. If it wasn't that, or the phone record, I would have likely gotten him on the timing of his financial choices."

"He stole this little move from an agent before him,” Mormont said, referencing Quorin who had taught Jon everything he now knew and used. “I don't recommend any of you try it, but it's still worth understanding and examining."

"What do you think happened, Agent Snow?" another agent asked.

"I think Baelish pulled his funding to get back at Bolton for taking a woman he felt entitled to away from him," Jon began, "and I think in turn Bolton somehow blackmailed Baelish—I don't know how yet—into giving back the funding. And I think Baelish saw an opportunity to use Hollard to get rid of Bolton, only it backfired, because Hollard found out that Sansa Stark, whom he had tried to save from his bombing of the Tarly building, lived with Bolton. And he couldn't quite bring himself to do it once he saw that."

"You mean Sansa Bolton," one of the agents corrected.

"I mean Sansa Stark," he said frostily, and the agent shrank back. "The only remaining questions are why Hollard wanted to protect Sansa Stark so badly, and how Bolton was blackmailing Baelish for so long. But until Hollard admits to Baelish’s involvement, we won’t know why he wanted to protect Sansa, and until we find hard evidence of blackmail, we won’t know how Bolton blackmailed Baelish."

Mormont led Jon back out into the hall, and turned to face him. Jon braced himself for a lecture—he knew one was coming.

"I don't need to tell you that if you breathe even a hint of this to your girl, you will be in so much legal trouble that you won't know which end is up."

"But you just did," Jon pointed out, and Mormont let out a little growl of frustration and stomped away from Jon.

**One Month Later**

"We’re as prepared as we’ll ever be,” said Olenna. “I think we’ve built a case.”

In the cramped kitchen of Sansa’s apartment, the three women stood before the case files, measuring their work.

Tomorrow was the court date.

Tomorrow was the start of the end.

Tomorrow she would see Ramsay for the first time since she had left him.

“I think we have,” Sansa agreed softly. “As good a case as we could build, anyway.”

“I do wish you’d show your man what you’ve accomplished,” Olenna said to Sansa in a rare display of sincerity. She touched Sansa’s arm, and Sansa covered Olenna’s hand with hers.

"Jon would love to see it," Daenerys added. "You don't need to protect him from this—he can handle it."

She had not yet shown Jon the case they had built together.

"It's not that," Sansa said, busying herself with stacking the notes to avoid their eyes. "It's not him, exactly, that I want to protect. I know he can handle it. He’s so strong. It's us, I suppose, that I'm trying to protect. I don't want everything to be about _this_."

Jon was coming over shortly, as she wanted to see him the night before all hell broke loose once again. He was, really, the only person she wanted to see right now.

They had spent the past month as friends, though it had been agony. The only help was that they had both been consumed with their own causes: she, with preparing this case, and Jon with his own work. He was often in Maidenpool for long stretches, anyway. So the temptation hadn’t been as excruciating as it could have been.

But tomorrow would end their period of restraint, she had decided. No matter the outcome of this trial, she would finally be done with the demolition of her old life. She would put the wreckage behind her, and tomorrow, she would finally begin to build anew.

"Fair enough," Olenna said, sounding almost sad. Sansa’s mobile buzzed from the countertop by the sink. “Is that your man?”

She looked at the screen. It was a short video that Arya had sent of her boyfriend, Gendry, attempting to give their new puppy Nymeria a bath. She smiled, and set her phone aside. She and Arya had been in touch, though she had not told her—or anyone else in her family—anything about the trial. She had merely informed them that she and Ramsay were separated and working on a divorce—and it was shocking how that alone seemed to change everything. Robb and Myrcella had asked her to come stay for a weekend, and Mom and Bran and Rickon were going to be coming down to King's Landing in a few weeks to visit her as well. 

“No, but he should be here soon,” she realized, looking at the clock. It was nearly seven now.

“Well,” Daenerys began, “tomorrow it all begins.” The three women looked between each other.

In a sudden burst of emotion, Sansa threw her arms around Daenerys and Olenna. Daenerys returned the embrace while Olenna stiffened.

"Oh, don't say it again, please," Olenna begged. "If I had a dragon for every time you've tearfully thanked us--"

"--You could buy me a new car," Daenerys finished for her. Olenna rolled her eyes and swatted at Daenerys.

"You have three. That is two too many. Go home."

Sansa showed them out the door, suppressing the urge to hug them both one more time. They agreed on meeting at the courthouse at seven thirty the next morning, and then the two women disappeared down the cramped staircase, and she was alone.

She returned to her apartment. Though it was still sparse—she had only moved in last week—she was in love with it already. It was an old building, and perhaps a little shabby, but she had loved it the moment she had set foot inside. She went to hastily clear off all of the photographs and other pieces of evidence that they had laid out, but there was a knock on her door.

Jon was there, his hair still wet from a shower, holding a brown paper bag of takeout food. Sansa had known she would not have time to make anything tonight, and when he had called asking to come over and offering to bring food, she had taken him up on both offers.

"Oh thank god, I'm so hungry," she sighed, opening the door wider for him. She loved seeing him in his crisp suiting for work, of course—he wore suits so well—but she liked him best as he was now, in jeans and a dark tee shirt, his hair wild.

"Is that everything?" he asked as he set the bag on the kitchen counter, his gaze straying to the photographs, and Sansa suddenly felt embarrassed, and frantic to draw his attention from it.

"Yeah, I meant to clean all that up before you got here," she said, hassled, as she went to the table to clear it off, but Jon stilled her hand.

"Why won't you let me see it? Dany said that what you've come up with is amazing."

His voice was quiet. In the dim light they stood over the evidence, and Jon studied her, his brows knit together. She cringed from him; she knew she had hurt him but she had never meant to.

"Because I don't want you to know everything," she replied tightly. "And I don't want--"

'--I already told you I couldn't possibly think less of you for any of it. Do you not trust me?"

He looked so wounded as their eyes met.

"Of course I trust you, and I know you wouldn't think less of me," she said. "It's not that at all. It's just that..."

She sighed, pushing back her hair. "I don't want it to define us. I don't want my life to be about ...this...anymore. I feel like Ramsay already has taken so much from me. I feel like I've been unhappy for long enough. I just—I just want to move on. I have all of the makings of an amazing life, and I want to enjoy them.

“For the first time in my life I am in love with an amazing man—and he's in love with me—and I have people who would drop everything in their lives to help me, and I have the job of my dreams, and I'm even making things work with Arya... Right now I have everything I always dreamed of."

She looked at him again. "I just want this to be over. I want it to be in the past. There's nothing but pain here." She gestured to the chronology of Ramsay’s cruelty that they had so carefully constructed.

Jon looked down at the photographs, his fingertips grazing over the one of the blood smear on the floor. He pressed his lips together.

"It's not just pain, though. This is a victory."

"Well, not yet. I have no idea if this will all hold up. But that's the thing—it doesn't matter to me. No matter what the outcome of the trial, I'm moving on. Starting with tomorrow night..."

She smiled shyly at him and took his hand. She had already told him that she wanted to end this holding pattern tomorrow: no matter how the trial went, she intended on making up for all of the time they had lost. He scoffed, shaking his head, but he squeezed her hand.

"You don't know yet how exhausting court is," he warned her gently. "You are just going to want to sleep tomorrow, I promise you—and that’s okay. I don’t expect--"

"—No," she said stubbornly, then flushed. "Okay, so that sounded a little childish," she admitted.

She leaned her head against Jon's shoulder. "I just want to be happy now. I don't want to waste any more of my time being unhappy. I want to go on dates with you, and visit my family, and travel, and start taking classes on things that I care about, and read every single book there is, and...have lots of sex...and finally learn how to make curry properly. And I want to do it _now_. I feel like I've spent enough time feeling sad about this. "

She felt Jon lean his head against hers. "I don't want you to see me as a victim," she added softly.

"Then show me how you're saving yourself."

Still leaning against him, she twisted her head to look down at the pictures. Lined up together with other pieces of evidence—the data breach report from the NW on the night that Ramsay had hacked into the NW email accounts; the bank's report of Ramsay turning off the debit card that was in her name; witness accounts from people in Jon's building of them practicing self-defense together—she had constructed the story of the days leading up to that Friday night that she had left Ramsay.

Daenerys had already told her that Jon would likely be called on to testify under oath that Sansa had not been having an extramarital affair with him; even the thought of it was humiliating—and also infuriating, that that could be used to excuse Ramsay's violent behavior. "Wait—are these the NW's pictures?" Jon asked suddenly.

"Copies," she replied. "I contacted Donal Noye and got them from him."

"Why didn't you tell me? I would have asked him for you."

"I wanted to do it myself."

She felt him shift slightly to kiss her hair, and her skin tingled all over, as though he had kissed her all over. She pulled back from him and cleared her throat. "It's meant to show a timeline of all of the events leading up to me leaving."

She let go of his hand, and pointed to the beginning of the timeline: copies of the terse emails that she and Robb had exchanged, in which Robb asked why she was no longer returning his calls.

After that, she had a picture that Margaery had given her—after Sansa had finally explained some of what she was dealing with, Margaery had leapt into action, determined to help, and she had indeed come through. It was from a Tarly Publishing party earlier in the summer, at Randyll Tarly's estate.

She and Margaery were standing with several other women from the company in a line, arms around each other, wearing sunglasses, a striped awning of a party tent behind them, manicured lawn stretching out all around them. All of the other women had agreed to wear white dresses—it had been Margaery's idea, as Margaery was always coming up with silly bonding things like that—but Sansa was in jeans and a long-sleeved blouse, sticking out painfully among them.

"What's this one for?" Jon asked, leaning over to study the picture.

"I couldn't wear the dress I had planned to wear," she explained, ashamed, "because I had too many bruises on my arms and legs."

A muscle leapt in Jon's jaw, but he said nothing, studying the photograph.

"Wait," he said suddenly. "Was that party catered?"

"Um." Sansa stared at him in confusion and surprise. "Yeah, actually. It was. ...Weird coincidence, but do you remember Uncle Petyr? Mom's friend? Sort of short, had a mustache--"

"—I remember him," Jon said immediately. His gaze was electric as he stared at her, watching her face carefully.

"Well, he owns the catering company that always does the Tarly parties," she added. "He wasn't at the party or anything; it's just a funny coincidence."

Jon cleared his throat and looked back at the picture, tapping the photograph in thought. "Why do you ask?" she pressed.

"Nothing," he said. "Just—nothing. Nothing."

He was staring at the photograph. "Anything...odd...happen at that party?" His voice was fake-casual but she felt the tension in the air. "Anything out of the ordinary?"

"No..."

The party had been torture—there was a unique sort of pain in standing in the hot sun all day in too-heavy clothes, your body aching and throbbing from another person’s cruelty, while you tried to pretend to be as happy as everyone around you. Holding your sangria felt so silly, the white dresses and perfect lawn and sunshine and music and laughter and small talk all felt so _fake_ , like you were trapped in a sinister but lovely lie. _Are we all just pretending that life is worth living? Is this how we hide from the fact that all of the stories of love and happiness are fake—by throwing parties and drinking too much and wearing pretty dresses?_

She had counted the seconds until it would be appropriate to leave; she had grit her teeth each time a new person asked why she was dressed in such heavy clothing; she had laughed and smiled and made conversation with Randyll Tarly's handsome but shockingly ignorant son, Dickon-- "Wait."

Jon almost broke his neck he looked at her so fast. "Oh my god."

She stared at the photograph. "That's where I knew Dontos Hollard from," she breathed, her face growing hot. This had to be why Jon was asking, she realized. "Oh my god."

She touched her cheek, felt her skin on fire. "I can't believe I forgot, but it was such a horrible day that I suppose it just sort of got lost in the shuffle. He was working as one of the caterers at that party, and was drunk. At one point he spilled a huge bowl of sangria on both Margaery and me, not minutes after this picture was taken. He ruined her dress and my outfit, and Randyll Tarly happened to be passing by and saw the whole thing."

"What happened?"

"It was so awful," Sansa recalled. "I can't believe I forgot it. Mr. Tarly completely humiliated him, and started yelling at him in front of everyone. You could tell he wanted to start crying. It was awful. He hadn't meant to spill it, of course—he was drunk, and obviously had a problem. It was just a silly accident.

“And I didn't care, of course, and Margaery didn't either, because she's so sweet, but Mr. Tarly acted like Hollard had done something disgusting and evil, and just kept yelling at him, and berating him. It was a huge scene. And I knew Mr. Tarly lived and died by his son, Dickon, so I just—I was so desperate to get him to stop; he reminded me of Ramsay in how cruel he was being—well, I just interrupted him and asked him to introduce me to his son. It was probably so weird to watch."

"Did it work?"

"Well, mostly. Mr. Tarly took me to meet his son, Dickon, and forgot about Hollard. I found it a bit funny that he was so outraged that Hollard had ruined my outfit, yet he was happy to let me stand in the sun, soaked in sangria, while he droned on about his son."

"Right." Jon seemed consumed as he stared at the picture in thought.

"I guess that potentially answers the question of why Dontos tried to warn me away from the building, when he went to bomb the Tarly building," she realized. "But not why he would then try to bomb my house. But maybe it was payback for me turning him in."

"Yeah. Maybe."

Sansa stared at him pointedly.

"I'm guessing you can't share why you're so excited about this," she said, and he looked at her again, exhilarated.

"Not just yet," he said. "I want to, so badly," he admitted.

She shivered, staring down at the pictures. "Anyway," he said suddenly, "forget about that. What about the others?"

They moved on, both slightly shaken from the revelation.

"Here's a newspaper article on the bomb scare. And here is an email that Agent Mormont had sent," she continued, moving onto the next printout. "You told me that he had known that I was being abused the minute he saw me, so I called him and asked him if he'd be willing to testify. He said he had something even better: he sent this email, explaining to the lead of the Mooton case that he needed your presence on the Tarly case because he needed your interviewing capabilities. He literally says in the email that he’s planning on interviewing an abuse victim and needs someone with training."

"No one tells me anything," Jon observed. "Mormont didn't tell me about this."

"I asked him not to," Sansa admitted. "But it's perfect—an NW agent trained specifically in domestic violence not only recognized me as a victim of abuse, but also wrote it out in an email."

"That's brilliant," Jon said softly, and she flushed. "You thought of it," he added, and she avoided his eyes.

"Well, anyway," she continued quickly, "from there, you might have to testify. There's the period of time where we were hanging out that Ramsay might try to construe as me cheating."

"Yes. Dany told me,” he said tightly.

"But luckily, Daenerys found some of your neighbors in your building who had seen us in the basement gym, or going down to it," Sansa explained, "so they'll be able to testify that we weren't just holed up in your apartment. And that will be how I can explain that I was learning self-defense because of Ramsay."

And then they came to a report on the NW data breach, the night before it had all happened. The report put the time of the breach just before the next piece of evidence—an email that Ramsay had sent to the group inviting them all to Lommy’s the next evening.

After that came the pictures from _that_ night.

Jon kept staring at the picture of the smear of blood on the floor. She watched him pick up the picture again, then set it down.

"Why the wine glasses?" he asked. There was a picture of the two wine glasses—one empty, one full—with the orange pill bottle between them.

"Ramsay had gotten a Viagra prescription," she explained, not looking at him, "and told me about it. That was when that happened," she continued, touching the picture of the smashed lamp on the floor. "Because I...didn't want him to use the prescription, and tried to get away."

"Right." Jon fisted his hand, not looking at her. He watched him press his lips together, his face flushing with anger, and her stomach turned. This was precisely why she'd not wanted to show him these pictures. "And then this happened," he guessed, touching the picture of the smear of blood on the floor.

"Well, before that he burned your book, but I don't have any pictures of that," she admitted. "Then that happened...and that was when I got to use some of the self-defense moves I had learned," she added, trying desperately for some levity. She took Jon's hand once more, and he gripped her fingers tightly.

There was more evidence, of course, compiled from weeks of extensive work, but this told a story, a story that was intended to depict Ramsay for what he really was, while also dousing any potential argument he might make about an extramarital affair.

After that there were the pictures of the bruises—new ones and old ones—combined with a report from her visit to the hospital, with the doctor noting in his report that many of her injuries were not new.

They stared down at the story she had constructed together in silence, gripping each other's hands tightly. "If this doesn't work out," she finally said, "then we'll move on to simply acquiring a divorce. Daenerys and Olenna said that having this trial, even if Ramsay isn't found guilty, will lay the groundwork for me not having to serve Ramsay the divorce papers. Usually, apparently, I would be responsible for him signing them as well, but in rare cases a judge will order that unnecessary."

Jon didn't say anything. "But either way," she said, "I don't consider myself married to Ramsay anymore. And tomorrow marks the end of this part of my life--" she reached across Jon and picked up the picture from the Tarly party, of her all covered up and miserable, surrounded by happiness but untouched by it, "—and the beginning of this one."

She set the picture down and, nervously, leaned forward and pressed a kiss to Jon's lips. He released her hand and pulled her closer, kissing her with that blazing intensity he had, made all of the years of unexpressed passion penned in by his desire to be gentle, to be kind, to be careful.

Throughout this whole thing, they had put the romance between them on hold as much as they could—but he had still been so close by, in a way that was new to her. More than anything he had been her steadfast friend, delighting in every victory for her and mourning every grief as if it were his own.

He had helped her move into this new apartment in the little spare time he had from work, happy to help her lug the cheapest second-hand sofa she could find up the cramped, un-air conditioned stairs. He had sat with her for hours after she had finally had her phone call with Arya, holding her hand as she had cried with grief and relief—grief for the time she had been estranged from her sister, and relief for the fact that they were now, at last, starting anew.

Her life mattered to him. He wanted to be a part of it. And she could not help but think that sometimes friendship was the best romance of all.

She had wanted to be part of his life in return, as much as she could. So she had made dinners for him in her new kitchen when he got out of work at ridiculous hours, and had sat with him on his couch as he had numbly watched sports, too tired to do anything else.

She had even, in secret, started learning about hockey, in the hopes of impressing him once hockey season started again. Maybe they'd even go to a few games together.

She had met his friends from the NW, though she was shy, and embarrassed that they all knew so many of the sordid details of her life with Ramsay—and yet they had welcomed her as if they had been friends all their lives, because they loved Jon, and that made her love them all at once too.

She felt him deepen the kiss, pulling her against him in desperation before, abruptly, releasing her.

"Sorry," he said, a little out of breath, as he turned away. He cleared his throat and raked a hand through his hair, and as he turned she saw that the back of his neck was flushed. "Anyway. I got wraps from this vegan place called Beric's that Val insists is great. I don't usually like vegan, but--"

"--I'm not hungry," she said suddenly, anticipation coiling in the pit of her stomach. She would be too tired tomorrow—but she wasn't tired right now. And all she could think of was how in love with Jon she was. He looked back in surprise.

"Oh. But you just said--"

"--I'm not hungry anymore," she interrupted, and bit her lip as she took a step closer to Jon. She had never done this before—she had never been the one to make the first move. She watched Jon's eyes grow darker with lust as he realized what she meant.

"Sansa, we don't have to," he said softly. "Tomorrow's going to be hard, and--"

"I know it is, but I don't care. It doesn't matter. It's already in the past, to me."

**Jon**

She was looking at him with her eyes aglow, her cheeks flushed; she was looking at him the way he had never dared to hope she might look at him.

He was not ready to believe she had felt the same all of these years, but he was certain that she felt the same instinctive pull to him that he did to her, that same friction between their souls that made him look for her in every crowd, that turned every color a reference to her, that made every song about her, even the ones that had nothing to do with love. It was the friction that made every emotion so much sharper, so that joy wounded much as anger; and so much sweeter, so that sadness felt as good as happiness, as long as it was for her.

 _Robb is going to_ kill _me_ was his final coherent thought, before he took her hand and pulled her to him.

**Sansa**

She lost her balance and stumbled into him, but he was holding her shoulder and her jaw, his fingers sliding and twisting into her hair, as he kissed her more deeply than he ever had before. Her fingers dug into his shirt, his chest hard and warm beneath the soft, worn cotton.

Her bruises had mostly faded; she had not wanted him to see her for the first time while they were still visible, but this was close enough. She had intended on doing this tomorrow night—she had even bought candles, which were still in their packaging in her bedroom—but she wanted him _now_. She wanted to step over the threshold into this new part of her life with him. She wanted to be happy _now_.

His lips were sliding against hers, that perfect primal slick feeling that made kissing feel so good, and his beard was scratching at her chin. She realized he was guiding them away from the table—and then her back hit the wall, and she heard him hit the light switch on the wall beside them, bathing them in darkness. It was suddenly too warm, and she felt something tighten deep inside her, followed by a warm, damp throb between her legs.

His skin was on fire beneath her hands, and she slipped her hands beneath the hem of his shirt to feel more of him, feel the heat of his skin and the roughness of the hair trailing down his abdomen and the perfect ripple of muscle that she had always noticed and had always tried not to think about. She felt that lean muscle shift beneath her touch—he was reacting to her touch and that notion gave her a heady thrill, to think she could have such an effect, to think that she might be able to make him feel as much as he was making her feel.

The light that came from the living room window was pale gold, the last of summer daylight, and it did not quite reach the kitchen. Distantly she heard her neighbor playing Radiohead, and beyond that, another neighbor watching a sitcom, as he kissed along her jaw, then down her neck, and then, tugging at her shirt, just above her breasts, and she felt like she couldn’t quite breathe.

She twined her fingers in his hair—she _loved_ his hair, she thought blindly—as his hands moved to grip her hips…and then he was kneeling before her, thumbs against her hipbones, and she realized what he was going to do, and her whole body bloomed with warmth.

She meant to tell him that he didn’t have to; she meant to be embarrassed or shy; but he was unbuttoning her jeans as he kissed along her stomach, and then she was frantically kicking off her sandals and helping him pull off her jeans— _next time I’ll wear a skirt,_ she thought wildly—and then her underwear, too, and then his rough, gentle hands were running along her hips and thighs and he was kissing her _there_ and she forgot to be worried or shy or ashamed.

How many times had she fantasized about strong hands— _his_ strong hands, though she had never admitted it to herself—gripping her hips, fingers digging into the soft flesh, forehead pressed against her pelvis as he kissed her most intimate place? It had been her first real fantasy, and had been the one whose appeal had never faded, over the years. Every time she thought about it, it was just as tantalizing, just as bone-deep fascinating, and just as electric, as it had been the first time. And now it was happening, and it was _Jon_ , the very person responsible for putting this fantasy into her head in the first place, and it was almost too much. He was guiding one leg over his shoulder, as she gripped his hair and trembled. Those pretty lips, the lips she had always admired, were moving against her slick skin, and then his tongue was, too, and she gasped and gripped his hair even tighter.

She had never before felt so scattered, so completely wild and lost, during sex. Her mind had always been elsewhere, always drifting off to unrelated anxieties—had she paid that bill? Had Willas’ latest email seemed terse?—or to her embarrassed awareness of how awkwardly _noisy_ sex was, or whether her belly was jiggling unattractively, or any other number of minor indignities, but even this observation fell from her fingers now, because she couldn’t seem to _think_ at all.

She was just vaguely noticing that her back was damp with sweat when she felt one hand move from her hip to in between her legs, and then he had slid two fingers inside of her, and all she could do was helplessly gasp and writhe against his mouth.

“Jon,” she breathed, closing her eyes and biting her lip, and she felt him sigh—a sound of _need_ , of longing—against her, and something deep within her fluttered and trembled, and then she felt it beginning to build. It was too soon; she wanted to feel like this forever, but she couldn’t help it. The feel of his fingers curling inside of her, the slickness of his tongue against the roughness of his beard, rubbing her skin almost raw, the dull throb of pressure where he was gripping her hip—it was too much, too perfect. And then, she felt his teeth graze her skin, just barely, as his fingers curved within her in just the right way, and she was unraveling, gasping and trembling against him.

As she drifted down from that high, he pulled away at last, breathless, his hair clinging to his forehead in sweaty tendrils, his face flushed and his eyes so dark they looked almost black. It was just as she had always so secretly, so shamefully, so wantonly pictured. He kissed her inner thigh, once, then let go, and shifted back to stand up.

His kiss was messy, and she tasted herself on his lips, but she did not care to be embarrassed, though she would be later. She slung her arms around his neck lazily, kissing him back just as desperately and sloppily, as he pulled her toward her bedroom. They smacked into the doorframe but neither even really noticed.

In the darkness of her bedroom, she finally let go long enough to help him pull his shirt over his head, then together they pulled hers off, too, and then he was kissing her once more as he clumsily undid her bra, and then she was pulling him onto her bed. Just a few days earlier he had helped her move the mattress into the bedroom, both of them flushed with the effort of angling it through the doorway, and flushed with the effort of not thinking about what they might soon be doing on that mattress, but now, at last, they were here, frantically undoing his belt together, hands colliding in their desperation, only looking up to laugh, slightly, breathlessly, together at their need.

And at last he kicked off his jeans and boxers and they were completely skin-to-skin, and he was kissing her shoulder, then her breasts, then her mouth again, and she was dizzy with love as he finally sank inside of her, murmuring her name against her neck. They moved together clumsily, desperately, trying to find a rhythm and never quite settling into it enough to think or to speak. Every gasp and every sigh, every frantic kiss and touch, was a thing they had not been able to say before, a thing they had not allowed themselves to say before. She felt something building up slowly once more, a little less tightly than it had before in her kitchen, a little more softly. It released more gently, and she clung to him as she felt him gasp and shudder her name as he found his own release soon after.

They lay there in a messy, overheated tangle of limbs, still coming down from that singular high, chests heaving. The room was dark, now; the sun had finally set. She lazily toyed with his hair, and he shifted, absently kissing her neck before pulling out of her and resettling against her, his head between her breasts.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked at last. She felt Jon let out a soft laugh that rushed along her skin.

“I’m thinking that your new neighbors are going to come to hate me very quickly,” he confessed.

“I guess we were a little loud. Maybe really loud.”

“Half of it was the bed,” Jon said sleepily into her skin. “I don’t think we put it together right.”

“It does squeak a lot.” She bit back a laugh.

“Better fix that tonight,” he mumbled. “But not right now.”

For a time they lay in silence, listening to the world around them. She knew he wasn’t asleep yet because she felt his fingertips lazily moving back and forth along her waist, the softest and most absent of touches. “What are you thinking about?” he asked after a little while.

“I’m thinking about how we should go see Jaime Lannister’s new movie this weekend and make out in the back of the theatre,” she admitted. “And how we should drive to the beach together before the summer’s over. And how we should have sex in the back of your car.” She normally would have blushed at the bluntness of her words but she felt open, free, and wild, at the moment. She just might do anything.

Tomorrow’s trial seemed so small, so insignificant, amid all of the beauty and color of the future that stretched out before her. It hardly mattered what happened; it was nothing more than a silly plot twist on the way to an ending that she was crafting for herself, crafting one beautiful thing at a time, crafting out of all the beautiful things that she had learned could exist for her from every book she had ever read and loved.

For no matter how fantastical or escapist, every story was based in truth, and even hidden away in Middle Earth was the promise that real life could be just as exciting, just as strange and wonderful as dragons and elves and heroes and all of the other things that could come from the boundless human imagination, if only she dared seek it for herself.


End file.
